From D.B. Morris
Laura Spinney says that “The idea of secret valleys where elephants go to die was probably dreamt up by hunters hoping to find a vast pile of ivory” (Review, 28 January).
However, this idea has a very long pedigree and Daniel Defoe mentions one aspect of this idea in his novel Captain Singleton published in 1720.
Defoe described a crossing of Africa (roughly from Mozambique to the Gold Coast) and near a lake the travellers found that “the ground was scattered with elephants teeth, in such number, as is incredible”.
Later on he refers to seeing “2000 elephants in a row” as they formed a battle line to frighten their predators.
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Defoe was a businessman, spy and novelist and he drew on many contemporary accounts for his novels. So although this crossing of Africa was well before anyone from the West achieved such a passage, he was probably relying on merchants’ reports from the coastal areas of Africa.
