I Fancy A Loango From His Clean-Cut
Features And Spare Make, But His Tribe I Know Not For A Surety.
One of these black trader factories is an exceedingly interesting
place to stay at, for in these factories you are right down on the
bed rock of the trade.
On the Coast, for the greater part, the
white traders are dealing with black traders, middle men, who have
procured their trade stuff from the bush natives, who collect and
prepare it. Here, in the black trader factory, you see the first
stage of the export part of the trade: namely the barter of the
collected trade stuff between the collector and the middleman. I
will not go into details regarding it. What I saw merely confirmed
my opinion that the native is not cheated; no, not even by a fellow
African trader; and I will merely here pause to sing a paean to a
very unpopular class - the black middleman as he exists on the South-
West Coast. It is impossible to realise the gloom of the lives of
these men in bush factories, unless you have lived in one. It is no
use saying "they know nothing better and so don't feel it," for they
do know several things better, being very sociable men, fully
appreciative of the joys of a Coast town, and their aim, object and
end in life is, in almost every case, to get together a fortune that
will enable them to live in one, give a dance twice a week, card
parties most nights, and dress themselves up so that their fellow
Coast townsmen may hate them and their townswomen love them.
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