176 THE EVOLUTION OF 



procure for themselves that has made them commence 

 to barter. 



Of the next step in development, that of bartering 

 something for another thing held to be of equal value, 

 we have in books of travel very many instances. The 

 ordinary method adopted by primitive savages of dealing 

 with strangers, in obedience to a general anthropological 

 law of suspicion of strangers which we cannot discuss 

 now, is to lay out their merchandise on a given spot 

 and watch the stranger from a safe distance lay out his 

 exchanges alongside. When the stranger has departed 

 to a safe distance they come out of their hiding-place 

 and examine the exchanges, and either accept or reject 

 them, or go back and wait for more. As a typical 

 instance I may quote from an old book of travel among 

 the Greenlanders in 1635, which tells us that * their 

 manner of trucking is thus : they put all they have to 

 sell together, and having picked out among the com- 

 modities that are brought to them what they like best, 

 they put them also together and suffer those they deal 

 with to add or diminish till such time as they are content 

 with the bargain/ This goes a little further than the 

 savage habit just explained, for the Greenlanders were 

 not apparently afraid to meet the stranger face to face 

 and truck with him. 



We now come to the instructive subject of trucking 

 with savages by barter, about which many wrong state- 

 ments have been made in error, to the detriment of the 

 European trader, owing to want of anthropological 

 knowledge and inquiry. This is in reality a question 

 of exchange value looked at from the point of view 

 of the buyer and seller, and you will perceive later on 

 that even in the most primitive and most highly civilized 

 bargains the principle is the same, and that the human 



