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. Now the most prevalent disease in the African bush comes out
of the cooking pot, and so to make what goes into the cooking pot -
which is the important point, for earthen pots do not in themselves
breed poison - safe and wholesome, you have got to have some one who
is devoted to your health to attend to the cooking affairs, and who
can do this like a wife?
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