Page:The Past, Present and Future Trade of the Cape Colonies with Central Africa.pdf/16

 elephant-hunting, or do not longer permit these animals to be killed by white hunters, and in this way we see every year the decrease of the export of ivory, and that, at the present moment, hardly a tenth part of the number of elephants are killed as in former times. The elephants are entirely extirpated from the country to the south of Bamangwato. In the land of the Bamangwato the elephants became scarce, and in the Matabele they also decreased, in numbers; but in the country of the Marutse and in the fifth division they are still very plentiful. Now this decrease in ivory has caused a great collapse in our trade with these parts. Certainly the natives as well as the traders never thought of new articles of barter to revive trade. In the latest time some measures have been taken by the Governors of the different provinces of South Africa which will influence the trade with those parts to a great extent. It was made a law that no guns, and ammunition should be brought among the natives, and I believe that if this law had been passed ten years ago, or if it had been strictly obeyed during the last eighteen or twenty months, the trade would not have collapsed in such a way as it has. You will find the game very plentiful still in parts where the natives had not any or only a few guns. At the present moment we see that the natives, who were accustomed to imitate the white man in his garment and to dress themselves in European clothing, begin to imitate also the white man in other ways, like to build houses as white men do; and those natives who gained before by killing ostriches and elephants, have no more the means to do all this. In other times, as long as the native possessed a gun or the necessary shooting material, he went into the forest and killed elephants, sold one tusk to the trader, and with what he got for one tusk he lived for two or three months and did nothing, his wives planting a little corn, and that was all the work he did. At the present moment, when game is scarce and when he cannot acquire any shooting material, he is obliged to take to agriculture, of which he never thought before. He cannot leave his new customs to imitate the white men, as mentioned. He is obliged now to work, and that is the reason why I believe we have already now an increase of exports from those parts in Indian corn, &c. I believe from what I saw and know at present from the Bechuanas and a native tribe on the Transvaal border, that this will increase from year to year; and what we have to do is to send men amongst those tribes who were peaceful; but some became warlike only because they got into the possession of guns. It needs only to send men among them to teach them the proper way of agriculture, and you would