In Quest of Big Ivory
MYI ESTINbig i or was kindled when I saw a pair of elephant tusks, recent y r ved from the carcass, in front of a botany ec ure room in 1957. The professor, who annually hunt d in M mbique, w was lling the students about his latest trop y. It was w ot until 1971 that I brought back my own big tusks from Sijarira on Lak ke K riba in the old Rhodesia.
These men remain undauntedly heroic, especially those who hunted in an Africa devoid of material assistance at the time
By then I had begun a quest to view the biggest known i y, hich would t e m to London, Munich, Washington, Khartoum on the Blue Nile, and Johannesburg. This quest was insidious, rather like malaria parasites in the bloodstream – an apposite metaphor, as elephant and the ubiquitous malaria-carrying mosquito live together. I began collecting first edition works of Africana written by the intrepid old elephant hunters, as well as accounts of other
