Order and rule were with
Jackson observed from habit, and were strictly enforced by him on all
the natives employed in the factory.
Although I have said the country looked as if uninhabited, there were
numerous villages hidden away in the long grass and brushwood, invisible
at a distance, being huts of thatch or mud, and not so high as the
grass among which they were placed. From these villages came most of our
servants, and also the middlemen, who acted as brokers between us, the
white men, and the negroes who brought ivory and gum and india-rubber
from the far interior for sale. Our trade was principally in ivory,
and when an unusually large number of elephants' tusks arrived upon the
Point for sale, it would be crowded with Bushmen, strange and uncouth,
and hideously ugly, and armed, and then we would be very busy; for
sometimes as many as two hundred tusks would be brought to us at the
same time, and each of these had to be bargained for and paid for by
exchange of cotton cloths, guns, knives, powder, and a host of small
wares.
For some time after my arrival our factory, along with the others on
the coast belonging to Messrs.
Pages:
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66