His Forge Is The Same As The Other
Forges, A Round Cavity Scooped In The Ground; His Fuel Also Is
Charcoal.
His other smith's tool consists of a pointed piece of
iron, with which he works out the patterns he puts at the handle-end
of his swords, etc.
I must now speak briefly on the most important article with which
the Fan deals, namely ivory. His methods of collecting this are
several, and many a wild story the handles of your table knives
could tell you, if their ivory has passed through Fan hands. For
ivory is everywhere an evil thing before which the quest for gold
sinks into a parlour game; and when its charms seize such a tribe as
the Fans, "conclusions pass their careers." A very common way of
collecting a tooth is to kill the person who owns one. Therefore in
order to prevent this catastrophe happening to you yourself, when
you have one, it is held advisable, unless you are a powerful person
in your own village, to bury or sink the said tooth and say nothing
about it until the trader comes into your district or you get a
chance of smuggling it quietly down to him. Some of these private
ivories are kept for years and years before they reach the trader's
hands. And quite a third of the ivory you see coming on board a
vessel to go to Europe is dark from this keeping: some teeth a
lovely brown like a well-coloured meerschaum, others quite black,
and gnawed by that strange little creature - much heard of, and
abused, yet little known in ivory ports - the ivory rat.
Ivory, however, that is obtained by murder is private ivory. The
public ivory trade among the Fans is carried on in a way more in
accordance with European ideas of a legitimate trade. The greater
part of this ivory is obtained from dead elephants. There are in
this region certain places where the elephants are said to go to
die. A locality in one district pointed out to me as such a place,
was a great swamp in the forest. A swamp that evidently was deep in
the middle, for from out its dark waters no swamp plant, or tree
grew, and evidently its shores sloped suddenly, for the band of
swamp plants round its edge was narrow. It is just possible that
during the rainy season when most of the surrounding country would
be under water, elephants might stray into this natural trap and get
drowned, and on the drying up of the waters be discovered, and the
fact being known, be regularly sought for by the natives cognisant
of this. I inquired carefully whether these places where the
elephants came to die always had water in them, but they said no,
and in one district spoke of a valley or round-shaped depression in
among the mountains. But natives were naturally disinclined to take
a stranger to these ivory mines, and a white person who has caught -
as any one who has been in touch must catch - ivory fever, is
naturally equally disinclined to give localities.
A certain percentage of ivory collected by the Fans is from live
elephants, but I am bound to admit that their method of hunting
elephants is disgracefully unsportsmanlike. A herd of elephants is
discovered by rubber hunters or by depredations on plantations, and
the whole village, men, women, children, babies and dogs turn out
into the forest and stalk the monsters into a suitable ravine,
taking care not to scare them. When they have gradually edged the
elephants on into a suitable place, they fell trees and wreathe them
very roughly together with bush rope, all round an immense
enclosure, still taking care not to scare the elephants into a rush.
This fence is quite inadequate to stop any elephant in itself, but
it is made effective by being smeared with certain things, the smell
whereof the elephants detest so much that when they wander up to it,
they turn back disgusted. I need hardly remark that this
preparation is made by the witch doctors and its constituents a
secret of theirs, and I was only able to find out some of them.
Then poisoned plantains are placed within the enclosure, and the
elephants eat these and grow drowsier and drowsier; if the water
supply within the enclosure is a pool it is poisoned, but if it is a
running stream this cannot be done. During this time the crowd of
men and women spend their days round the enclosure, ready to turn
back any elephant who may attempt to break out, going to and fro to
the village for their food. Their nights they spend in little bough
shelters by the enclosure, watching more vigilantly than by day, as
the elephants are more active at night, it being their usual feeding
time. During the whole time the witch doctor is hard at work making
incantations and charms, with a view to finding out the proper time
to attack the elephants. In my opinion, his decision fundamentally
depends on his knowledge of the state of poisoning the animals are
in, but his version is that he gets his information from the forest
spirits. When, however, he has settled the day, the best hunters
steal into the enclosure and take up safe positions in trees, and
the outer crowd set light to the ready-built fires, and make the
greatest uproar possible, and fire upon the staggering, terrified
elephants as they attempt to break out. The hunters in the trees
fire down on them as they rush past, the fatal point at the back of
the skull being well exposed to them.
When the animals are nearly exhausted, those men who do not possess
guns dash into the enclosure, and the men who do, reload and join
them, and the work is then completed. One elephant hunt I chanced
upon at the final stage had taken two months' preparation, and
although the plan sounds safe enough, there is really a good deal of
danger left in it with all the drugging and ju-ju.
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