CHAP. I. NATIVE LOVE OF TRADE. 33 



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

 gave them medicine to ensnre success. Unlike the real 

 Portuguese, many of the half-castes are merciless slave- 

 holders ; 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, 

 etc., and requiring so much ivory in return. These slaves 

 think that they have made a good thing of it, when they 

 kill an elephant 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 brought there is ex- 

 pended 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. 



The native medical profession is reasonably well repre- 

 sented. In addition to the regular practitioners, who are 

 a really useful class, and know something of their profes- 

 sion, and the nature and power of certain medicines, there 



D 



