¹ Rhaphta, somewhere on the Tanganyika coast, possibly Kilwa, was an important centre of the ivory trade for Arab merchants (Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, ed. Frisk, H. (Goteberg, 1927), 17).Google Scholar

² The Travels of Marco Polo, transl. Latham, R. (London, 1959), 276.Google Scholar

³ The Masai obtained most of their ivory–some 1,000–1,500 tusks a year–from the Waboni, a tribe of hunters whose trade they strictly controlled.Google Scholar

⁴ Krapf, J. L., Travels and Missionary Labours in East Africa (1860), 185.Google Scholar Krapf states that 6,000 tusks were exported annually. Guillain, M., Documents sur l'histoire, la géographie et le commercede l'Afrique Orientale, III (Paris, 1948), 310–11, puts the export of ivory from the whole east coast at 25,000 frasilah (approx. 850,000 lb.). Pangani alone exported 35,000 lb. in 1856.Google Scholar

⁵ Suna dedicated a magnificent tusk of ivory to the lake god, Mukasa: Sir Gray, J., ‘The Year of the Three Kings of Buganda’, Uganda Journal (March 1950).Google Scholar

⁶ Burton, R.. Lake Regions of Central Africa (London, 1860) II, 223–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷ Cameron, V. L., Across Africa, I (London, 1877), 8r.Google Scholar

⁸ Livingstone, , Last Journals, II (London, 1874), 120.Google Scholar

⁹ F.O. Confidential Print (hereafter F.O. (C.P.)) 6805/53, Hardinge to Salisbury 17 September 1895.Google Scholar

¹⁰ In addition to the main centres of Ujiji and Tabora, there were lesser ones such as Zungomero, some 100 miles in from the east coast, which was a resting place after crossing the Nyika, and where a great army of touters preyed on down-going and up-coming caravans. Msene, about 100 miles north of Tabora, was the chief bandari (centre) of the western Nyamwezi country.Google Scholar

¹¹ Cameron, vol. I, 243.Google Scholar

¹² Lugard, Report no. 4 (March–August 1892), 88.Google Scholar

¹³ Jumbe Kimemata, an ivory trader, possessed a tusk weighing 264 lb. and three others of 220 lb. each. Teleki obtained a tusk weighing 228 lb. The Natural History Museum, Kensington, London, possesses a tusk II ft. 5½ in. long and weighing 236 lb.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Tipu Tib, the well-known ivory trader, who, with his father, traded for ivory at Ujiji and west of Lake Tanganyika, on his first trading expedition concentrated on small tusks. They were cheaper and easier to transport, and if well selected had a special market.Google Scholar

¹⁵ There was a royal monopoly of ivory in Ethiopia; and the ruler of Harrar had his own agent at Berbera, the great ivory mart of Somaliland.Google Scholar

¹⁶ The rumour of a proposed new scale of ad valorem duties at the coast in 1886 caused a rush to get the higher class of ivory down before it came into effect (F.O. (C, P.) 5370/7, Kirk to Rosebery, June 1886).Google Scholar

¹⁷ Livingstone, who probably gave currency to the idea that ‘black ivory carried white ivory’, states: ‘Those Arabs who despair of white ivory invest their remaining beads and cloth in slaves’ (Last Journals, I (1867), 232). Cameron, Tipu Tib, Schweinfurth and Petherick all affirm that hired porters, not slaves, carried the ivory.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Chanler, W. A., Through Jungle and Desert (London, 1896), 33.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Tipu's account of the ease with which he made his profits was not the usual fortune attending ivory trading. For a frasilah of beads Tipu bought frasilah of copper at Utetera; he gave ½ frasilah to Stanley on parting, and with the remaining 4½ frasilah he obtained zo frasilah of ivory. A frasilah of beads cost $3 in Zanzibar. He could sell the ivory for at least $50 per frasilah. Thus his $3 had turned into $1,000 (H. Brode, Tippoo Tib (1907), 129). Stokes, ivory trader and gun runner, brought down to the coast in May 1891 £8,000 worth of ivory(F.O. (C.P.)6051/415, Euan-Smith to Salisbury, 21 May 1891).Google Scholar

²⁰ F.O. (C.P.) 6039/310, Euan-Smith to Salisbury, 24 February 1890.Google Scholar

²¹ Zanzibar Archives: Hamerton to Bombay Government, 28 September 1841.Google Scholar

²² John Perherick, after a varied career as a mineralogist in upper Egypt and Nubia, in the employ of Muhammad Ali during 1845–48, established himself at El Obeid as a trader; at the same time he was appointed British consular agent for the Sudan. In 1853 he set up at Khartoum as an ivory trader. Petherick was the first Englishman to get so far south. His activities as an ivory trader led him into the Bahr el Ghazal, and in 1858 he visited the Nyam Nyam (Zande) country lying along the modem Congo-Sudan frontier.Google Scholar

²³ Sir Johnston, H. H., The Nile Quest (London, 1903), 110.Google Scholar

²⁴ Grant, J. A., A Walk Across Africa (1864), 402.Google Scholar

²⁵ In A report on the Nile District, (F.O. (C.P.) 7954/81, 15 May 1902). Captain J. A. Meldon, describes the method of the Bari tribe in hunting elephant: ‘A herd of elephants is located and the natives collect in large numbers, then they form an enormous circle and at a given signal fire the grass. The circle of natives gradually closing in as the grass is burnt, the elephant rush madly in every direction, seeking to escape, and many are burnt, while those who do leave the circle half-blinded and suffocated, are speared by hundreds of natives. This method of hunting is luckily confined to the dry season, December and January, and February, when the grass is high and easily burnt.’ Another method of elephant killing, popular in Bunyoro, was the heavy drop spear and pit. The hunter would perch on a tree beneath which the driven animal would pass and be speared between the shoulders. The Somali considered the single-handed killing of an elephant an heroic act equal to the lion-killing of the Masai, and the hero wore the hair feather and ivory bracelet.Google Scholar

²⁶ Schweinfurth, , Heart of Africa, II, 24.Google Scholar

²⁷ Gordon, Central Africa, 22 October 1875, 136.Google Scholar

²⁸ ‘I am quite independent of the Khedive for money. In a year he had had £48,000 from the province and I have spent say £20,000 at the outside, and have £60,000 worth of ivory here…I am sending off a great deal of ivory today. It was confiscated by Baker at the time he fell out with Abou Saoud. The ivory caravan has just started.’ Colonel Gordon in Central Africa, 1874–79, (London, 1881), 17.Google Scholar

²⁹ Wilson, C. T. and Felkin, R. W., Uganda and the Egyptian Sudan, II (London, 1882), 170.Google Scholar

³⁰ The Company's proposal to go into partnership with the Arabs came too late; the blockade was over by the time Jumbe Kimemata, a well-known caravan leader, arrived at Mombasa.Google Scholar

³¹ During the civil war in Buganda in January 1892, much of the king's ivory fell into the Company's hands. Mwanga, the king, also used ivory to compensate the Protestants for their losses in the religious wars.Google Scholar

³² F.O. (C.P.) 6124/116, 26 January 1891, quoted from Thomson.Google Scholar

³³ Cameron, II, 332, speaks of the haulage of ivory from the interior paying the working expenses of a railway and still leaving a profit.Google Scholar

³⁴ F.O. (C.P.) 5732/100, Consul Holmwood to Hutton, 18 August 1888.Google Scholar

³⁵ F.O. (C.P.) 7404/4, Johnston to Salisbury, 21 November 1899. Johnston's love of wild life did not extend to the hippopotamus: ‘He is such a source of danger to life and property by his attacks on canoes and boats, and the ravages he commits on native populations, that I should like to withdraw every degree of protection from him, even at the risk of his partial extermination.’Google Scholar

³⁶ Gazette for Zanzibar and East Africa, 14 September 1892; F.O. (C.P.) 6123/109, 22 September 1890.Google Scholar

³⁷ F.O. (C.P.) 6849/299, Gosselin to Salisbury, Berlin, 22 une 1896.Google Scholar

³⁸ F.O. (C.P.) 7405/50, Hardinge to Salisbury, 9 September 1900.Google Scholar

³⁹ F.O. (C.P.) 7953/115, Eliot to Lansdowne, 19 April 1902.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Two well known names in the ivory trade in the early twentieth century were Lord Cranworth and Michael Moses. They figured prominently in the ivory trade from the Congo. Not all was profit, for their half-caste Portuguese employee absconded with 5000 lb. of ivory.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Lt. Col. Delmé Radcliffe was one of the first officials so guilty. See F.O. (C.P.) 7402/ 106, 8 September 1899.Google Scholar

⁴² F.O. (C.P.) 6849/183, Berkeley to Salisbury, 21 February 1896.Google Scholar

⁴³ Explorateur, Journal géographique et commercial, nos. 1–4 (Paris, 1875–1876).Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Gazette of Zanzibar and East Africa, December 1894.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ No European artist quite succeeded in cutting concentric balls of ivory after the manner of the Chinese.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ F.O. (C.P.) 6538/235 Incl. I, Piggott to the Imperial British East Africa Company, 7 February 1894.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ East African Standard, 13 January 1961.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ F.O. (C.P.) 6538/42, Crawford to Imperial British East Africa Company, 27 January 1894.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ F.O. (C.P.) 7823/162, Marsden to F.O., 12 June 1901.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Mombasa Times, 3 January 1961.Google Scholar