C. G. Schillings, phot.
A HERD OF WHITE-BEARDED GNUS. IN THE BACKGROUND ONE OF THE CHARACTERISTIC HILLS OF THE MASAI UPLANDS.
While the Masai warriors thus took their share in elephant-killing, and the Wandorobo stuck to their long, trusted poisoned darts and poisoned spears, the caravan folk attacked the elephants with powder and iron bullets,[10] and slew whole hecatombs of them.
“Nowadays,” the leader of the caravan told me, “the chase is easier and less dangerous, and your firearms also give the man from the coast the power of hunting and killing the Fihl (elephant). For example, you know, sir, that my half-brother, Seliman bin Omari, is not a practised hunter. And yet, believe me, he and his people have brought down many, many elephants.”
But his banker on the coast, the Hindoo Radda Damja, certainly never hears one word of any elephant being killed by Seliman’s people:
“No one is so clever as he is at knowing nothing about elephants when questions are asked. The ivory is always something traded for with the natives, far, far away in the interior,” he adds, with a cunning wink. “The main point is that we all get pembe (ivory), and he gets plenty of it! I would like to work the business as he does, but, sir, I am not so clever in preparing amulets, and moreover, I don’t know as much as he does of the ways of the elephant.
“But it’s a pity that in all parts of the country the ivory is becoming very scarce, so one has to be going always farther into the interior, and one must try to find new ivory districts.”
Thus my Arab informant talked a long time with me. He told me much that was interesting and much that was new to me. He told me of caravans that had been massacred, cut off to the last man by the natives in remote districts: and again of caravans that had been not one or two,—no, as long as six years on the march, that had buried a lot of ivory and gradually got it down to the coast. Time counts for nothing here, for the people—that is to say, those who are not slaves—receive only the one lump sum agreed upon for the journey, no matter how long it lasts. His friends, with caravans mustering many hundreds, had carried hundreds and hundreds of barrels of gunpowder into the interior, they had sought everywhere for new districts abounding in ivory, and the result had been the slaughter of the elephants on all sides. Nevertheless he had not much to tell me of men having enriched themselves by this trade. However, this did not apply to the traders on the coast, who advanced the money. These lent money to the caravan leaders, who went into the interior, at the high rate of interest usual in the East, and thus became rich men. They had, of course, also many losses. It happened not seldom that one of their debtors was “lost” in the interior, which means that he simply did not come back, but chose to pass the rest of his life in exile. And in that case it would be a difficult matter for the creditor to take proceedings against him.
