THE COMMERCE OF IVORY 433 



ished. Should any trader remove the smallest object from 

 the ship's cargo, the whole cargo was confiscated and, over 

 and above this, the guilty trader was punished in an ex- 

 emplary manner.* 



From Marco Polo's accounts, the ivory market in Zan- 

 zibar flourished in the thirteenth century, for, treating 

 of Madagascar and Zanzibar, he asserts that there were more 

 elephants there than in any country in the world, and he 

 adds: "The amount of traffic in elephants' teeth in these 

 two islands is something astonishing." Although, from 

 certain errors in his description of this region, he appears 

 to have derived his facts at second hand and confused some 

 of his data, this statement in regard to the ivory traffic 

 of Zanzibar is almost unquestionably correct. One of his 

 erroneous assertions in reference to elephants here is inter- 

 esting enough in itself to be cited, more especially as it was 

 undoubtedly true for other regions. This is that the 

 natives, when about to bring up a war elephant to the at- 

 tack, would "ply him well with their wine," until he was 

 half drunk. In this state of semi-intoxication the animal 

 was fiercer and bolder than when sober, and his attack was 

 more impetuous. This can, however, scarcely refer to 

 Zanzibar, for the trustworthy Arab writer, Mas'udi, definitely 

 asserts that elephants were not tamed or trained there in 

 any way, and that the natives only hunted them to kill 

 them.f 



Although many of the ancient trade routes have been 

 abandoned for one reason or another, still in a number of 

 cases the old order of things has been maintained with but 

 little change. ,In the ivory trade, for instance, the port 

 of Aden on the coast of Arabia, at the entrance to the Red 



*Chau Ju-kua, "Chu-fan-chi" ("A Description of Barbarous Peoples"), transl. by 

 Friedrich Hirth and W. W. Rockhill, St. Petersburg, 1911; introduction, p. 21. 



fThe Book of Ser Marco Polo the Venetian, transl. and ed. by Col. Henry Yule, London; 

 1875, Vol. II, pp. 404, 416; note p. 418. 



