" Nowhere else in Africa where I have hunted was the ivory so good as in Karamojo. -The average over hundreds of tusks came out at the astonishing
weight of 53 pounds per tusk. -And the quality was number one. -The average over two hundred and ten head of bull elephant killed in the Lado came
out at only 23 pounds per tusk, while Ubangi and Lake Chad gave an average of 27 pounds per tusk."
-Karamojo Safari- (p.258)
"That is a funny thing about ivory. -It is not what meets the eye that makes the weight; it is the hollows in the socket.-And so in this case it suddenly burst
on me that the weights were going to eclipse anything I had hitherto got in a single day.- Al though I had killed twelve in a day, the highest bag for a single
day had stood at 1,340 pounds. -Now as I entered the weights in the ivory book, it began to look as if the present lot of nine elephant with one tuskless one
was going to top the record lot. -And so it did. -The combined weights of the fifteen tusksplus the two stumps totaled 1,463 pounds fresh weights. -When,
months after, they were sold in London at Hale's auction rooms, they had only lost seven pounds in drying and they realized the astonishing price of nine
hundred pounds......- In the whole of my hunting career I never overtopped this total of 1,463 pounds. -The nearest I came to it was when I killed nineteen
bulls in an afternoon in the Lado Enclave, but they totaled only 1,440 pounds on the scales in spite of the fact that they all had two teeth. -Two other bags of
fifteen each just fell short of 1,400 pounds."
-Karamojo Safari- (p.244)
"Now for a trail line-out of everything that had to be moved: three hundred and fifty-four tusks of an average weight of 53 pounds each from one hundred
and eighty head of elephant; time spent on the actual hunting, six months; average number of elephant per month of hunting time, thirty; total time of safari,
fourteen months; wage bill per month, one hundred and fifty pounds; for the whole safari, twenty-one hundred pounds; bonus toeach boy of three months'
wages, four hundred and fifty pounds; cost of stock and trade goods, say four hundred pounds; total expenditure, say three thousand pounds. -Against this
set the value of ivory, all first-rate stuff, salable on the spot to the Indian merchants at seven rupees per pound, say ten shillings per pound, equals nine thou-
sand pounds sterling. - After deducting something for drying out, shrinkage, and allowing for extras, the total profit came out at about six thousand pounds,
and we still had a full-power safari."
-Karamojo Safari - (p.282)
"At the time of which I write Mumias was a town of some importance. -It was the base for all trading expeditions to the Lake Rudolph basin, Turkana, Dabossa
and the Southern Abyssinia country. - In the first few years of the trade in ivory this commodity was obtained for the most trifling sums; for instance, a tusk
worth £50 or £60 could be bought for two or three shillings’ worth of beads or iron wire. -As time went on and more traders flocked to Karamojo to share in the
huge profits of the ivory trade, competition became keener. -Prices rose higher and higher. -Where once beads and iron wire sufficed to buy a tusk, now a cow
must be paid. - Traders were obliged to go further and further afield to find new territory until they came in violent contact with raiding parties of Abyssinians
away in the far North. - When most of the dead ivory in the country had been traded off the only remaining source was the yearly crop of tusks from the elephants
snared and killed by the native Karamojans. -For these comparatively few tusks competition became so keen and prices so high that there was no longer any profit
when as much as eight or ten cows had to be paid for a large tusk, and the cows bought down at the base for spot cash and at prices of from £2 to £5 each"
- W.O.A.E.H.- (p.21)
" That safari was one of my most successful. - We "shucka'd" or went down country, with over 14,000 lbs. of ivory -- all excellent stuff."
-W.O.A.E.H.- (p.77)
