Although, As I Have Laid Down, The Bush Factory At Its Best Is A
Place, As Mr. Tracey Tupman Would
Say, more fitted for a wounded
heart than for one still able to feast on social joys, it is a
Luxurious situation for a black trader compared to the other form of
trading he deals with - that of travelling among the native villages
in the bush. This has one hundred times the danger, and a thousand
times the discomfort, and is a thoroughly unhealthy pursuit. The
journeys these bush traders make are often remarkable, and they
deserve great credit for the courage and enterprise they display.
Certainly they run less risk of death from fever than a white man
would; but, on the other hand, their colour gives them no
protection; and their chance of getting murdered is distinctly
greater, the white governmental powers cannot revenge their death,
in the way they would the death of a white man, for these murders
usually take place away in some forest region, in a district no
white man has ever penetrated.
You will naturally ask how it is that so many of these men do
survive "to lead a life of sin" as a missionary described to me
their Coast town life to be. This question struck me as requiring
explanation. The result of my investigations, and the answers I
have received from the men themselves, show that there is a reason
why the natives do not succumb every time to the temptation to kill
the trader, and take his goods, and this is twofold: firstly, all
trade in West Africa follows definite routes, even in the wildest
parts of it; and so a village far away in the forest, but on the
trade route, knows that as a general rule twice a year, a trader
will appear to purchase its rubber and ivory. If he does not appear
somewhere about the expected time, that village gets uneasy. The
ladies are impatient for their new clothes; the gentlemen half wild
for want of tobacco; and things coming to a crisis, they make
inquiries for the trader down the road, one village to another, and
then, if it is found that a village has killed the trader, and
stolen all his goods, there is naturally a big palaver, and things
are made extremely hot, even for equatorial Africa, for that village
by the tobaccoless husbands of the clothesless wives. Herein lies
the trader's chief safety, the village not being an atom afraid, or
disinclined to kill him, but afraid of their neighbouring villages,
and disinclined to be killed by them. But the trader is not yet
safe. There is still a hole in his armour, and this is only to be
stopped up in one way, namely, by wives; for you see although the
village cannot safely kill him, and take all his goods, they can
still let him die safely of a disease, and take part of them,
passing on sufficient stuff to the other villages to keep them
quiet.
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