But he was not in the least squeamish about telling us that Tippoo Tib
had surely buried huge quantities of ivory, and had caused to be slain
afterward every one who shared the secret.

"How long ago?" asked Monty. But natives of that part of the earth are
poor hands at reckoning time.

"Long time," he assured us. He might have meant six years, or sixty.
It would have been all the same to him.

"No. Me not liking Tippoo Tib. One time his slave. That bad. Byumby
set free. That good. Now working here. This very good."

"Where do you think the ivory is?" (This from Yerkes.)

But the old man shook his head.

"As I understand it," said Monty, "slaves came mostly from the Congo
side of Lake Victoria Nyanza. Slave and elephant country were
approximately the same as regards general direction, and there were two
routes from the Congo--the southern by way of Ujiji on Tanganyika to
Bagamoyo on what is now the German coast, and the other to the north of
Victoria Nyanza ending at Mombasa. Ask him, Fred, which way the ivory
used to come."

"Both ways," announced Juma without waiting for Fred to interpret. He
had an uncanny trick of following conversation, his intelligence
seeming to work by fits and starts.