276 EXISTING SETTLERS 



heads of a few native carriers, fares forth into the 

 unknown, or, at any rate, into some outlying district 

 where opposition is shght and native villages many. 

 Here he builds a good-sized hut, and, arranging 

 his calico, beads, matches, brass wire, and other 

 tempting wares on roughly constructed shelves, 

 publishes to the small surrounding community that 

 the new establishment is now open for the transac- 

 tion of business, and commends his future to Allah. 

 His cash turnover is not, it must be confessed, 

 at first encouraging; but with a natural shrewd- 

 ness sharpened by his recent commercial training, 

 considerable transactions in native produce soon 

 enabled him to realise that, though cash is not yet 

 plentiful, he has, in a short time, succeeded in 

 showing a profit in kind. The floor of his hut is 

 now cumbered with sacks of maize, millet, oil- 

 seeds ; ground-nuts in matting peep from beneath 

 the kitanda * upon which his siesta is taken ; a large 

 mat at one end of the living-rooixi holds a heap 

 of dirty-looking pieces of valuable bees-wax, and a 

 not inconsiderable quantity of half-cut balls of 

 greyish rubber fill up a soap-box in the angle by 

 the solitary unglazed window. The budding trader 

 looks around with satisfaction, feeling that his future 

 is now full of promise. A journey to the nearest 

 European centre shortly afterwards enables the 

 entire accumulation to be disposed of, and a credit 

 opened on the strength of the accruing profits 

 for a much larger stock. In a year or two the 

 small native boy who has afforded him hitherto 

 all the assistance he required proves insufficient to 



* An Arab or Indian bedstead. 



