THE COMMERCE OF IVORY 435 



beasts of burden, or in hauling and carrying materials for 

 construction, etc. Moreover, in many parts of India and 

 the contiguous countries in which elephants are to be found, 

 religious superstition has sometimes invested them with a 

 quasi-sacred character. Hence elephant hunting, not for 

 the purpose of capturing and training the animals, but 

 merely to kill them and cut out their tusks, while actively 

 pursued for many centuries in Africa, has been carried on 

 but rarely in India, the native Indian ivory coming almost 

 invariably from animals which have died a natural death, 

 and as the elephant is exceptionally long-lived, the supply 

 from this source has been limited.* 



The commerce in ivory in the interior of Africa is now 

 carried on by caravans under the conduct of Negroes or 

 Arabs, the funds being furnished by the European or Hindu 

 merchants, as it very rarely happens that the leader of the 

 caravan operates with his own resources. The German 

 product is chiefly shipped from Bagawayo, Saadani, and 

 Pangani; the posts for British ivory are Mombasa, Lamu, 

 and Kismayu. While Bagawayo was formerly the most 

 important of the posts, Mombasa has recently made very 

 rapid headway. f 



Statistics show that about 1830 the average imports 

 of ivory into Great Britain totalled 462,000 pounds; of this 

 330,000 were retained for home consumption. Even at 

 this time it was feared the breed of elephants was threatened 

 with extinction, owing to the wholesale slaughter of these 

 animals. England's supply came from the west and east 

 of Africa, the Cape of Good Hope, Ceylon, India, and the 

 countries to the eastward of the Straits of Malacca. In 

 1831 West Africa furnished Great Britain with 288,400 



*W. Heyd, "Histoire du commerce du Levant au Moyen-Age," French edition, Leipzig 

 1886, Vol. II, pp. 629, 630. 

 t"La Belgique Colonial," Vol. II, p. 617, 1897. 



