A few details of the native system of measurement may be of interest. The hand, which is their standard of lineal measure, varies with the commodity to which it is applied, but in no case is it the same as our hand of four inches. In selling ivory the hand is the length of the forearm from the elbow, with the fist doubled. In measuring ivory a liberal allowance is made for the hollow portion at the root of the tusk,[12] and also for the point, neither of which are reckoned in the length. In buying or selling cloth the hand is practically the same as our yard, being measured from the centre of the chin to the tip of the fingers, with the arm stretched out. ----- Footnote 12: The elephant tusk is more or less hollow for a third of its length at the thick end, measured when extracted from the skull. ----- Things were progressing very favourably, and there was any amount of ivory to be had, and I was buying it at the rate of two or three tusks a day, and at eight to ten shillings a pound each tusk would be worth from £10 to £15. I was at first at a loss to account for so much ivory being in the country, as the natives there do not hunt the elephant, but I found that the Wanderobo tribe, who live on the outskirts of the country, are great hunters; in fact, they live entirely by hunting; and the elephants wounded by them, and getting away, seek cover in the forest, where many of them die of their wounds, the wounds being made by poisoned weapons. The Kikuyu, going into the forest to find wild honey, find the ivory, and as no trader had been to the country to buy it before, this accounted for the quantity to be had on my first visit. These facts may also account for the remarkable stories one comes across sometimes of “elephant cemeteries.”[13] Certainly, in a long and varied experience of elephant-hunting in various parts of Africa I have never come across anything but the slaughter caused by the hand of man which could account for these so-called cemeteries, nor have any of the elephant-hunters I have met—and I know all the chief ones—been able to confirm the “cemetery” yarn. ----- Footnote 13: A traveller some years since, having come across large quantities of elephants’ skulls and bones collected together in one place, started the theory that elephants came to particular spots to die. The probability is that such places are scenes of the destruction of a herd by slaughter. (See P. H. G. Powell-Cotton’s “In Unknown Africa,” 1904.) -----