Below Cameroon The Kruboy Does Not Like To Go, Except To
The Beach Of An English Or German House, For
He has suffered much
from the Congo Free State, and from Spaniards and Portuguese, who
have not respected his feelings
In the matter of wanting to return
every year, or every two years at the most, to his own country, and
his rooted aversion to agricultural work and carrying loads about
the bush.
The pay of the Kruboy averages 1 pounds a month. There are
modifications in the way in which this sum is reached; for example,
some missionaries pay each man 20 pounds a year, but then he has to
find his own chop. Some South-West Coast traders pay 8 pounds a
year, but they find their boys entirely, and well, in food, and give
them a cloth a week. English men-of-war on the West African Station
have, like other vessels to take them on to save the white crew, and
they pay the Kruboys the same as they pay the white men, i.e., 4
pounds 10s. a month with rations. Needless to say, men-of-war are
popular, although service on board them cuts our friend off from
almost every chance of stealing chickens and other things of which I
may not speak, as Herodotus would say. I do not know the manner in
which men-of-war pay off the Kruboy, but I think in hard cash. In
the circles of society I most mix with on the Coast - the mercantile
marine and the trading - he is always paid in goods, in cloth, gin,
guns, tobacco, gunpowder, etc., with little concessions to his
individual fancy in the matter, for each of these articles has a
known value, and just as one of our coins can be changed, so you can
get here change for a gun or any other trade article.
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