Ten tons of Indian cannabis vanish on the way to Abyssinia

A French adventurer, Henri de Monfreid, bought ten tons of cannabis in Bombay, probably charas, and had it licensed for export to Abyssinia as an insecticide, in 240 bags. The governor of the Seychelles held the cargo for almost four months before finding no ground to stop it. At Harar half the bags were found to hold fertiliser; the rest, sent on to Hamburg, turned out to be fertiliser too. British officials had watched the shipment from 1922 to 1924 and lost it. Their consulate in Abyssinia reported that his profits from the hashish trade in 1923 had bought him a controlling interest in a flour mill and an electricity works. He later admitted that the cargo was meant for Egypt, and that he had been dealing in hashish bound for that country since 1915.^[1]

• Imports and exports