Therefore I was a trade product - a new trade stuff
that ought to be worked up and developed; and he found himself
unable to do this, for although he had secured the first parcel, as
it were, and got it successfully stored, yet he could not ship it,
and he felt this was a reproach to him.
Many were his lamentations that the firm had not provided him with a
large sailing canoe and a suitable crew to deal with this new line
of trade. I did my best to comfort him, pointing out that the most
enterprising firm could not be expected to provide expensive things
like these, on the extremely remote chance of ladies arriving per
bush at Agonjo - in fact not until the trade in them was well
developed. But he refused to see it in this light and harped upon
the subject, wrapped up, poor man, in a great coat and a muffler,
because his ague was on him.
I next tried to convince Mr. Glass that any canoe would do for me to
go down in. "No," he said, "any canoe will not do;" and he
explained that when you got down the Rembwe to 'Como Point you were
in a rough, nasty bit of water, the Gaboon, which has a fine
confused set of currents from the tidal wash and the streams of the
Rembwe and 'Como rivers, in which it would be improbable that a
river canoe could live any time worth mentioning.
