The mirror., 1921-07-14

IOT ulIlntT-tneIl, II you nave survivor
successfully your journey you must locate
the right one out of many caves"
Mr.. Mundy himself went hunting for
this treasure, and he has put many of his
own experiences into his newly published
and decidedly thrilling novel of adven-
ture, "The Ivory Trail"
"But didn't find it," he admitted cheer
fully to an interviewer, "and, so far as |
know, all or most of it is still waiting to
make somebody else many times a mil
lionaire.'
How" he was asked, "dd it get where
it is? Who is Tippoo Tib? And what
do you have to do to find his treasurer"
"Tippoo Tib," explained the author and
follower of "The Ivory Trail" "is dead
row, but he was the Arab whom H. M.
Stanley made governor of half of, the
Congo. He was the biggest ivory hunter
and trader who ever lived since King
Solomon. Also he was slave trader
"Then the British government got after
him. 1t stopped his slave traffic, brought
him to Zanzibar, and told him to settle
down and be good boy. Then it sug-
gested he might tell where his ivory was
buried, and offered to give him 10 per
cent of its value in money. Did he tell?
Hardly. He said he would die with the
secret. So far as 1 know he did. l have
a notion that he killed or turned over to
cannibals most of the natives who helped
him to bury his tusks-at least million
of them, if the rumors are anywhere near
the truth. And since they never bothered
to take tusk weighing less than hun
dred pounds, you can see how much ivory
is in his hoard
"It probably is scattered about quite a
bit, along the routes of different caravans,
slaves in which sickened and died, thus
leaving tusks which could not be brought
down to the coast. Such ivory is so bulky,
no large numbers of tusks could be buried
in the ground without making mound,
which would have been discovered long
ago. That is one reason why l believe
much of the stuff is in the caves of Mount
Elgon-a wonderful elephant country, but
hard on human beings, and with canni-
bal tribes in the caves to whom it would
have been easy for Tippoo Tib to feed
the slaves who knew too much about his
secrets"
Then Mr.. Mundy spoke of some of his
own experiences in hunting the lost ivory
treasure A native of the Masai-the
fercest and most unruly of the African
tribes-struck him in the leg with a spear
which had been dipped in gangrene, to
insure an agonizing death within a very
few minutes.
"My native boys saved my life" he
said. "They pinned me out on the ground,
sitting on me and holding my wrists and
ankles. Then the headman heated stems
of grass in the fire and thrust them into
the open spear wound. They were won
derfully loyal and brave to do it, for the
treatment is frightful torture, and they
were not at all sure l would not have
them killed or at least beaten as soon as
! was strong enough"
Another exciting experience, which he
has described in detail in "The Ivory
Trail," was being charged by herd of
infuriated elephants. Coward where l
stood, from every angle to my front the
whole herd stampeded. The foremost
awoke with a battle din of falling trees
and crashed underground split apart by
the trumpeting of angry bulls and the
screams of cows summoning their young
1t was flood of maddened monsters,
crazed with fear, pent by their own num-
bers, forced forward by the crowd behind
that invited me to dam them if could"
He stood in line with big rock which
he hoped might break their ranks, but one
bull caught sight of him, ''trumpeted like
a siren in the Channel fog and came at