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

46
THINKING BLACK
same old bait slave is going to catch more. K is the
man who is next mulcted, and he pays one young woman,
a pig, and a load of rubber ; business is not so brisk, you
see. There is better fishing farther on, however, and the
village of Lak pays up two slaves, two oxen, and two loads
of rubber, all on the vile old plea of harbouring Onesimus.
Can we not now strike the grand total and get done with
it ? No, we must include a closing (?) item. Farther along
there was an open gateway, and this hunted-down slave
darts in, only to doom the villagers to a final fine—ten
slaves, cash down ! Now you may strike your terrible
total. Twenty- three slaves "plus two oxen plus one pig
plus three loads of rubber for one runaway slave. Plain
arithmetic all this, not rhetoric. Deduction :
The
Portu-
guese put a premium on the maltreatment of slaves.
Therefore the old specious pro-slavery argument, running
"The man who treats his horse badly is a fool," etc., this
argument, I say, is as rotten as is the audacious analogy
between a horse and a human being.
But there is worse to come. Take another vile
expedient having the same sad objective, I mean, the
swelling of this Westward-going stream of slavery :
the " Shylock system " among the natives. Here is the
trader's chance, and the borrowing native is soon involved
in a quagmire of trouble, to wit, a 1000 per cent extortion
on the borrowed goods. (Not an E.O.E. invoice, by
any means, for this arrogant Shylock never makes an
error and never omits anything.) Snr. is a case in
point :
as usual, he does not want his calico back, he wants