Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

OUR AFRICAN APPRENTICESHIP 43
crossing. Remorseless as destiny, down swoops this gin-
seller on the drowned victim's next-of-kin, claiming his
pound of flesh. And gets it, too, in two qualities : flesh
of man and flesh of beast, an ox and a slave, Katumwa
his name. History is silent on how these bereaved
Biheans weathered the financial sea, for if they borrowed
the slave they would need to pay two for one. Kapapelo,
their gin-drunk nephew, lost his balance and was drowned
for it ; here is a Portuguese — reader, forgive the
sneer !—resolved not to lose his credit balance at any
rate.^
A weaker word than "fascinating" would therefore
describe the Portuguese methods in Bihe and farther East.
Dominating and dwarfing all other issues is the Fort, and
round the average Commandant you have a ring of
rascals, " Ovimbali," white man's personnel. "No one
hearing, one cannot speak," so said Cicero long ago, and
so say these hangers-on who buy and sell justice to the
highest bidder. Not a mere case this of " having the
ear " of their master ; they are his ears and they are his
mouth. Coleridge described it all unerringly when he
said that "a dwarf sees farther than the giant when he
has the giant's shoulder to mount on." Hemmed in by
injustice of this sort, the wise native is the man who
sanely and shrewdly steers clear of it all. Kan was
one such, and wronged though he was, he snapped his
fingers at it all : " Why should I go to the Fort for help
against the Fort ? Why go to the Chefe ? Is it worth
1 See Mr. Swan in The Slavery of To-Day for substantial corroboration.