Viewing page 7 of 36

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

-2-

headstones, not to find some quaint old epitaph, but to try to discover some of my early artistic efforts).
    
On almost a moment's notice I left for Aden, Arabia, for the old company, and I lived there, in what Burton contemptuously termed "the Coal Hole of the East", in the old agency, known as "Bait-el-Captan" ("The House of the Captain") for two years, trading in ivory, tortoise shell, goatskins, coffee and civet, with Arabs, Abyssinians and East Indians. I purchased during this period tons of ivory from Menelik, the then King of Ethiopia, paying for it with a certain brand of American muslin which was used as currency then in certain districts of the realm. From Aden I was suddenly sent down the East African coast, to relieve and ship home our Agent in Mombasa, whom I found nearly dead of fever.

This done, I remained in Mombasa for the next two years, and saw and handled more ivory there than I had thought existed in the whole world. Mombasa was then, due to the construction of the Uganda Railway, probably the greatest ivory port in Africa, and streams of bloody, smelling tusks flowed though our godowns. I traded for ivory in Arabic, sold [[underlined]] Merikani [[/underlined]] (American cotton cloth) in German, bought rhino horns and hippo teeth in Kiswahili, and chilli peppers in Hindustani.

I travelled, also, into the interior after ivory. Most of the big East African collections of ivory of those days passed through my hands. I knew hunters, traders and poachers of all kinds: and heard tales of the ivory trade that not many others have. I had at and under my table some of the most rascally ivory thieves (from the Belgian and Portuguese viewpoints) or most eminent sporting adventurers (according to the British idea) who graced the eastern half of Africa. I bought their ivory with money they flung a month later at the loveliest demi-mondaines of Cairo, Paris and London; and in a short time I saw them back again after more elephants. Some I never met again after