THE COMMERCE OF IVORY 433
ished.
Should any trader remove the smallest object from the ship's cargo, the
whole cargo was confiscated and, over and above this, the guilty trader
was punished in an exemplary manner.*
From
Marco Polo's accounts, the ivory market in Zanzibar flourished in the
thirteenth century, for, treating of Madagascar and Zanzibar, he
asserts that there were more elephants there than in any country in the
world, and he adds: "The amount of traffic in elephants' teeth in these
two islands is something astonishing." Although, from certain errors in
his description of this region, he appears to have derived his facts at
second hand and confused some of his data, this statement in regard to
the ivory traffic of Zanzibar is almost unquestionably correct. One of
his erroneous assertions in reference to elephants here is interesting
enough in itself to be cited, more especially as it was undoubtedly
true for other regions. This is that the natives, when about to bring
up a war elephant to the attack, would "ply him well with their wine,"
until he was half drunk. In this state of semi-intoxication the animal
was fiercer and bolder than when sober, and his attack was more
impetuous. This can, however, scarcely refer to Zanzibar, for the
trustworthy Arab writer, Mas'udi, definitely asserts that elephants
were not tamed or trained there in any way, and that the natives only
hunted them to kill them.f
Although
many of the ancient trade routes have been abandoned for one reason or
another, still in a number of cases the old order of things has been
maintained with but little change. In the ivory trade, for instance,
the port of Aden on the coast of Arabia, at the entrance to the Red
*Chau
Ju-kua, "Chu-fan-chi" ("A Description of Barbarous Peoples"), transi,
by Friedrich Hirth and W. W. Rockhill, St. Petersburg, 1911;
introduction, p. 21.
tThe Book of Ser Marco Polo the Venetian, transi, and ed. by Col. Henry Yule, London; 1875, Vol. II, pp. 404,416; note p. 418.
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