In Districts Like These I Was In,
Remote From The M'pongwe Trader, The Fans Carry The Rubber To The
Town Nearest To Them That Is In Contact With The Black Trader, And
Sell It To The Inhabitants, Who In Their Turn Resell It To Their
Next Town, Until It Reaches Him.
This passing down of the rubber
and ivory gives rise between the various towns to a series of
commercial
Complications which rank with woman palaver for the
production of rows; it being the sweet habit of these Fans to
require a life for a life, and to regard one life as good as
another. Also rubber trade and wife palavers sweetly intertwine,
for a man on the kill in re a wife palaver knows his best chance of
getting the life from the village he has a grudge against lies in
catching one of that village's men when he may be out alone rubber
hunting. So he does this thing, and then the men from the victim's
village go and lay for a rubber hunter from the killer's village;
and then of course the men from the killer's village go and lay for
rubber hunters from victim number one's village, and thus the blood
feud rolls down the vaulted chambers of the ages, so that you,
dropping in on affairs, cannot see one end or the other of it, and
frequently the people concerned have quite forgotten what the
killing was started for. Not that this discourages them in the
least.
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