The channels, and the mouths of
rivers, and the little bays opening from the Island of Pemba are
patrolled more or less regularly by British gunboats, and junior
officers in charge of a cutter and a crew of half a dozen men, are
detached from these for a few months at a time on "boat service." It
seems to be an unprofitable pursuit, for one officer told me that
during his month of boat service he had boarded and searched three
hundred dhows, which is an average of ten a day, and found slaves on
only one of them. But as, on this occasion, he rescued four slaves,
and the slavers, moreover, showed fight, and wounded him and two of
his boat's crew, he was more than satisfied.
The trade in ivory, which has none of these restrictions upon it,
still flourishes, and the cool, dark warerooms of Zanzibar are
stored high with it. In a corner of one little cellar they showed
us twenty-five thousand dollars worth of these tusks piled up as
carelessly as though they were logs in a wood-shed. One of the most
curious sights in Zanzibar is a line of Zanzibari boys, each
balancing a great tusk on his shoulder, worth from five hundred to
two thousand dollars, and which is unprotected except for a piece of
coarse sacking.
[Illustration: A German "Factory" at Tanga, the Store Below, the
Living Apartments Above.]
The largest exporters of ivory in the world are at Zanzibar, and
though probably few people know it, the firm which carries on this
business belongs to New York City, and has been in the ivory trade
with India and Africa from as far back as the fifties.
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