50 NATIVE LOYE OF TRADE. Chap. II. 



acknowledge himself his slave, but the man was too shrewd 

 for this ; he was a great elephant doctor, who accompanied 

 the hunters, told them when to attack the huge beast, and 

 gave them medicine to ensure success. Unlike the real 

 Portuguese, many of the half-castes are merciless slaveholders ; 

 their brutal treatment of the wretched slaves is notorious. 

 What a humane native of Portugal once said of them is 

 appropriate if not true : " God made white men, and God 

 made black men, but the devil made half-castes." 



The officers and merchants send parties of slaves under 

 faithful headmen to hunt elephants and to trade in ivory, 

 providing them with a certain quantity of cloth, beads, &c, and 

 requiring so much ivory in return. These slaves think that 

 they have made a good thing of it, when they kill an ele- 

 phant near a village, as the natives give them beer and meal 

 in exchange for some of the elephant's meat, and over every 

 tusk that is bought there is expended a vast amount of 

 time, talk, and beer. Most of the Africans are natural-born 

 traders, they love trade more for the sake of trading than for 

 what they make by it. An intelligent gentleman of Tette 

 told us that native traders often come to him with a tusk for 

 sale, consider the price he offers, demand more, talk over it, 

 retire to consult about it, and at length go away without 

 selling it ; next day they try another merchant, talk, consider, 

 get puzzled and go off as on the previous day, and continue 

 this course daily until they have perhaps seen every merchant 

 in the village, and then at last end by selling the precious 

 tusk to some one for even less than the first merchant had 

 offered. Their love of dawdling in the transaction arises 

 from the self-importance conferred on them by their being 

 the object of the wheedling and coaxing of eager merchants, 

 a feeling to which even the love of gain is subordinate. 



