After a long consultation, and firmly believing in the ‘fly oracle’, the people agreed to make their cattle payments. But here Petherick’s plan reveals its cunning: they could not agree what payments should be made or to whom and as the arguments dragged on, Petherick’s own execution was stayed a few more days.
Just when he had given up all hope a long winding column of men carrying ivory appeared out of the bush. Both the parties he had sent out had been successful – not only in bartering trade with the Girwi and Ajack tribes but also in securing food and porters. Petherick became quite emotional: ‘I met my men like old and dear friends rather than dependants.’ He added: ‘My persecutors, the Wadj Koing, seeing the Girwi and Ajack . . . carry ivory, now came forward, but in small numbers, to offer themselves as porters . . . affording me an opportunity of returning to my boats . . . With wind and swelling current in our favour, we were not long in reaching Egyptian territory and Khartoum.’
14 • Killing an elephant
An elephant does not kill a liar; it sniffs him and passes by.
Sudanese proverb
The biggest trade was slavery, but ivory grew in importance as travel along the Nile and throughout Sudan became easier. Even then, without arming the natives, it was, thankfully, difficult and laborious to kill elephants, especially large and aggressive ones. Until the Turkish Egyptian conquest enabled the ivory trade to flourish, the hundreds of small fiefdoms in east Africa competed with each other, some hunting elephants and some not. The warriors of those that did risked injury and death for the prestige of being an elephant hunter (rather similar to being a matador) and for the enormous quantity of meat an elephant could provide to the tribe – because, until the explorers and traders arrived, it was the meat of an elephant that was desired, not its tusks.
Petherick was one of the first explorers to observe the various native methods of killing elephants without the use of a firearm. Despite being part of an ecologically sustainable system it was still a bloody business. Some especially daring types would infiltrate themselves through the close thickets to where an elephant might be browsing. With a quick slash of a native-made sword the tendons of the elephant’s leg would be severed. The animal would then be tracked and killed. A variation involved the slightly safer deployment of spears or lances.
Fifty men succeeded in bringing an elephant to bay, around which they stood in a circle; whilst the furious young beast, with tusks about a foot in length, trumpeted his displeasure . . . A lad, sixteen years of age, sprang into the circle towards the elephant; when within ten yards of him the lad, making one more bound forward, threw his lance and hit the elephant on the foot, a feat entitling him to the animal’s tusks . . . the infuriated beast withdrew the lance with his trunk, and screeching with rage, he broke it in two, and darted at the party who had injured him. At the same time they made a simultaneous attack on his left side, which they pierced with their lances, and succeeded in drawing him off towards them from the object of his rage; this was no sooner undertaken than his right side was similarly pierced by half a dozen lances, thrown with such force that they penetrated to the socket. The maddened animal stood for an instant still, squirting water on his wounds from his trunk, extricating some of the lances, and breaking them; while so engaged he was subjected to renewed attacks, until, losing patience, he bolted off at a hard trot with several of the lances sticking in his body. The negroes followed at their utmost speed and succeeded in bringing him to bay a second time . . . the elephant, after repeated attacks, was overcome. Great were the rejoicings in the village on this occasion.
Other methods that were less man-intensive included excavating pitfalls in the vicinity of waterholes and streams where the herd were accustomed to drink. If the herd habitually went through narrow passes or gorges this would also be a good place to dig a pitfall. One cannot help feeling that the elephant displays as much intelligence in his defence as the attacker in his traps. Petherick reports one elephant being helped out of a pit by his fellow elephants using their trunks to haul on his trunk and so rescue him. Another method, which Samuel Baker also reported, involved a strong lance, five feet long: ‘the extremity shaped like a club, about four inches in diameter, is laden with a stone fixed to it with cords and plastered over with clay, the whole being made as heavy as it can be managed’. The hunter then ascended a tree that was known to overhang the noonday haunts of his prey. ‘When [an elephant] is directly under him, with all his force he sends the spear into his back and shoulder. When the spear has been well directed the animal bounds about for a short time, increasing the wound by the oscillation of the spear and thereby accelerating his death.’
Petherick soon became an ivory trader himself. When he told a reluctant chief through a translator that he wanted ivory,
the effect was electric; that they could obtain such valuables as glass beads for useless tusks of elephants, seemed incredible. Several of them bolted off immediately and [the chief] promised that on the morrow an abundance of tusks would be forthcoming . . . Trade of any description was perfectly unknown in the far interior which I had now reached . . . the only use made of ivory by the Niam Niam was for ornaments, such as bracelets and necklaces; some were ingeniously cut in imitation of cowry shells; and neatly cut thin flakes, like the scales of a fish, were curiously attached to a band like a piece of ribbon, and worn by the females around the neck.
Of course, the presence of ivory traders encouraged natives to hunt far more elephants than they could eat. This hastened the sad demise of the great herds. Petherick, however, was there at the very beginning of this slaughter in the upper reaches of the Nile.
A herd of eighteen elephants was announced, by beat of tom-tom, as being in the vicinity. Old men, hags, warriors, women and children collected with the most sanguine expectations; and, anxious to witness the scene, I accompanied the hunters: a finer group of well-grown and active men I never beheld. The slaves, many of them from the Baer, but most of them from unknown tribes in the west, were all but black, and followed their more noble-looking and olive coloured masters. Two hours’ march . . . through magnificent bush brought us to the open plain, covered hip deep in dry grass; there were the elephants moving leisurely towards us. The negroes, about five hundred, swift as antelopes, formed a vast circle around them, and by their yells brought the huge game to a standstill. As if by magic the plain was on fire, and the elephants, in the midst of the roar and crackling of the flames, were obscured from our view by the smoke. Where I stood, and along the line as far as I could see, the grass was beaten down to prevent the outside of the circle from being seized in the conflagration; and in a short time – not more than half an hour – the fire having exhausted itself, the cloud of smoke gradually rising, again displayed the group of elephants to our view, standing as if petrified. As soon as the burning embers had become sufficiently extinct, the negroes with a whoop closed from all sides upon their prey. The fire and smoke had blinded [the elephants]; and, unable to defend themselves, they successively fell by the lances of their assailants. The sight was grand, and although their tusks proved a rich prize, I was touched at their massacre.
Before trading, Petherick had to impress a chief enough so that he wouldn’t be robbed or detained. Their guns, called ‘our thunder’, were often the way such an impression was made, sometimes by shooting an elephant at a range impossible to spear throwers. But even a chief cowed by guns could be devious. Petherick borrowed Werne’s method of appearing omniscient when he discovered the native love of tobacco, called taab.
They were great smokers of tobacco, of their own growth, mixed with the rind of a banana, also indigenous to the country. To my great discomfort, after having partaken of my pipe, [the chief] expressed a liking for my tobacco; and not knowing how to refuse him, and at the same time exceedingly anxious to retain intact the small quantity remaining, I had recourse to a ruse; and, giving my instructions accordingly to my servant, he retired into the interior of the hut to fill the pipe. In th
e mean time I explained to Dimoo [the chief] that if any person smoked my tobacco who was not perfectly well disposed towards me, it would betray him by breaking his pipe in my presence. Not afraid of the ordeal he accepted a well-replenished pipe, whilst my servant, by a sign, acquainted me that my instructions had been carried out. Dimoo, seated opposite me in the company of some eight or ten notabilities of the place, commenced smoking vehemently, when an explosion of gunpowder in the bowl of the pipe sent it, as well as the chief and his companions, flying. Dimoo, regaining his equanimity, begged me to pardon him, and that he would never more conceal anything from me; and the only harm he meant was to detain me amongst them until they had become possessed of the whole of our riches . . . After this little event, I was looked upon as something almost superhuman, and was respected accordingly.
15 • A bit more on elephants
They make a fool laugh then cunningly count his teeth.
Ethiopian proverb
But following the modern Nile, I was not here to kill elephants – unlike, say, Bob Parsons, the founder and executive chairman of internet colossus Go Daddy, whose ‘vlog’ features busty young women in Go Daddy tee-shirts mock-interviewing him about his self-help advice (some of which, I have to say, are pretty good: I particularly recommend his top ten business tips). Anyway, Bob was on a hunting trip in Africa when some impoverished locals asked him to kill a rogue bush elephant that was destroying their crops. This being Zimbabwe they were also starved of meat – which the elephant provided after Bob had shot it. In a stunt of dubious taste Bob posted a video of himself astride the slain elephant with locals cutting up the meat while wearing Go Daddy tee-shirts.
In parts of Africa it is true that there are too many elephants for the land they are meant to live on. In South Africa they have begun to cull elephants – not for ivory, but because there are too many. But around the Nile and its sources the opposite is becoming true – elephants are fast disappearing, victims of a Chinese-driven trade in ivory. So I wasn’t here to kill anything, I was here to listen.
I was at the Murchison Falls, not so far from where elephants roamed through the forest in great herds, though I had yet to see any here. I saw Nile elephants by Lake Albert and in the Sudd, standing by the river, a small group of females undecided, it seemed, about whether to be in or out of the water. In the forest elephants make far less noise than their giant form suggests, unlike bears which are noisier than you’d expect. Seen from a river boat pushing through some giant thistle on the bank, an elephant looks so big you wonder that there are any left at all. Needing upwards of 400 pounds of vegetable fodder a day, elephants are always on the munch. If they are undisturbed their bellies make the most incredible gas-powered food-processing noises, but if they catch your scent they have the strange ability to switch off the stomach rumbles immediately, leaving an ominous silence, and you are at once anticipating being charged and flattened.
That they make so much noise when digesting is no surprise – only 40 per cent of the massive amount they eat is actually digested. Then there is the water – no wonder the elephant needs the Nile, as it requires over thirty gallons a day of it, to be precise. Sleeping only two hours a night, elephants make a habit of the midnight feast, the dawn raid. ‘It is the best time to see them,’ said Carl Meurer, an animal-watching German whom I met at the river camp. ‘Just look for the white cattle heron over the river bank – they always go where there are elephant.’
Carl’s main interest was animal sounds. He had an iPod loaded with strange noises: whale music, chimp chatter and his latest find, what sounded to me like an industrial washing machine. Carl was ecstatic, ‘That’s what it is, this is the noise of a washing machine in a zoo next to the elephant house. And that is an elephant imitating the noise!’ The resemblance was uncanny, but Carl told me that elephants in the bush now habitually make the noise of truck roar on a road, the sound of a Land Cruiser rattling into life, or a strimmer zinging through grass. They can also do natural sounds such as frogs croaking or big cats coughing.
Their super mimicry skills seem best suited to low-frequency sounds which they can emit and receive in spectra below human audibility. The trunk and even the legs enable them to hear over distances of several miles. The trunk and each foot contain many nerve endings designed to register sound in association with the auditory nerves in the ears. If it really needs to hear, an elephant will lay its trunk along the ground and raise one foot. This improbable move increases pressure on the other three feet and boosts their hearing capability.
These recently discovered skills are all part of the clever ways elephants organise themselves, both in groups and wandering alone through the savannah and forest of the upper Nile region. ‘Elephants are far more intelligent than chimps,’ said Carl, swigging on a Nile Gold beer. ‘In fact they’re more intelligent than humans.’
He told me of an experiment which had previously been designed to test the reasoning and creativity of chimps. The test required two elephants to solve a mechanical problem by pulling ropes to get food. If there was only one elephant it wouldn’t work. They needed to cooperate to win. Not only did the elephants co-operate, some didn’t even bother to try until the second elephant was released to help them. And one prescient pachyderm worked out how to stand on the rope and get food that way – something even the experimenters hadn’t thought of.
Elephants with specially daubed marks on their faces have been paraded in front of large mirrors. In a show of intelligent awareness, or perhaps nascent vanity, the subject very ably used the mirror information to rub the mark off with its trunk. That is, when they can see the mirror clearly: elephants have notoriously poor eyesight. Hunters report being missed by an elephant they are in broad view of not six yards away. Upwind, of course, the elephant’s sense of smell is capable of whiffing danger over a mile away, which along with their specially developed hearing means they are well defended.
African elephants exist in two species – forest and bush elephant. These can interbreed but rarely do so. Bush elephants are considerably larger and have one toenail fewer, a small enough difference, but enough to earn them different-species status. A large bull bush elephant can weigh up to ten tons. And the blood within him is 10 per cent of his weight. So killing an elephant can literally release a ton of blood.
Elephants use their intelligence to avoid this bloodletting in many surprising ways. Hunters report groups of female elephants protecting a large bull by forming a pack around him and moving in sympathy, this way denying the hunter a shot at the valuable ivory-bearing male (female African elephants also have tusks but they are smaller and more curved than male ones).
Modern textbooks report that African elephants live in female herds with mature males living alone or in temporary bachelor herds. But this may well be an intelligent adaptation that has occurred in the last hundred years due to the mass killing made possible by the repeating rifle. Aviatrix Beryl Markham wrote of flying in the 1920s over vast herds of elephants with several males among the females. She speculates that changing behaviour to lone males and all-female herds – which were less attractive to hunters – improved the chances of elephant survival.
One hopes they can come up with something new to defeat the latest weapon waged against them: helicopter hunting. Though the Ugandan government receives millions of dollars from the US to hunt down Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony (more on him later), there have been substantiated reports that helicopters have been used both to shoot and to transport the ivory of elephants in Uganda and southern Sudan. Kony has been accused of funding his decades-long children’s army rebellion with ivory that finds its way via Khartoum to China. Certainly the recent explosion in illegal elephant killing has received an impetus from Chinese commercial involvement all over central Africa: it makes it that much easier to ship the stuff home. Workers are counselled (via Chinese websites on getting ivory) to wrap their ivory in tinfoil to thwart airport X-ray machines – in Africa rather than Beijing, o
ne suspects. Will the African elephant go the way of the northern white rhino – whose horn sells in China for $30,000 a pound, more than the price of gold? The white rhino is virtually extinct in the wild, whereas there are said to be between 689,000 and 472,000 elephants in Africa, though of course it is hard to say exactly how many.
Hunted from helicopters, they may not stand much chance, but on the ground the elephant – it’s the world’s largest land animal – is a pretty dangerous beast. It can outsprint Ernst the Norwegian Nile runner, managing a good 30mph when it charges. Hit by something weighing over six tons doing thirty is like being hit by a very heavy truck, one of those low-slung vehicles carrying bottles of Coke perhaps. Every year there are deaths in zoos, at least two and often up to four a year, stretching back to when we started keeping wild elephants in zoos. Man-killing elephants are no longer executed, though they were in the past. Some were shot and some were hanged in some kind of strange anthropomorphic rite, but the most bizarre was the fate of ‘Four-Paw Topsy’, who stomped a visitor to death during an animal show in 1903 in America. The killer elephant was about to be hanged when Thomas Edison jumped in and offered to electrocute it, at Coney Island. His rationale was that it would show how dangerous AC current (used in electrocutions) was compared to the DC current his company supplied. Fed cyanide-laced carrots just in case Edison’s machine failed, 6,000 volts and a few minutes later the creature was dead – the whole thing being filmed by the newly formed Edison Film Company. You can see a copy of this gruesome snuff movie on YouTube, though you’re warned it could be disturbing to some viewers. Old and murky, it is disturbing.
Being thrown to the elephants was a fate for the gladiator who drew the short straw in Roman times. Josephus, never one to miss a good story, tells us that Ptolemy IV, who ruled in Egypt from 221 to 204 BC, wanted to enslave and brand all Jews dwelling along the Nile with the symbol of Dionysus. The Jews refused and were dragged into an arena full of trumpeting elephants, to be stamped to death. Josephus reports that a miracle occurred; angels intervened and the Jews were saved.
Red Nile: The Biography of the World’s Greatest River Page 33