Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/237

 Payments on the Ogowé are made in goods; the natives do not use any coinage-equivalent, save in the strange case of the Fans, which does not touch general trade and which I will speak of later. They have not even the brass bars and cheetems that are in used in Calabar, or cowries as in Lagos. In order to expedite and simplify this goods traffic, a written or printed piece of paper is employed—practically a cheque, which is called a "bon" or "book," and these "bons" are cashed—i.e. gooded, at the store. They are for three amounts. Five fura=a dollar. One fura=a franc. Desu=fifty centimes=half a fura, The value given for these "bons" is the same from government, trade, and mission. Although the Mission Évangélique does not trade—i.e. buy produce and sell it at a profit, its representatives have a great deal of business to attend to through the store, which is practically a bank. All the native evangelists, black teachers, Bible-readers and labourers on the stations are paid off in these bons; and when any representative of the mission is away on a journey, food bought for themselves and their canoe crews is paid for in bons, which are brought in by the natives at their convenience, and changed for goods at the store. Therefore for several hours every weekday the missionary has to devote himself to store work, and store work out here is by no means playing at shop. It is very hard, tiring, exasperating work when you have to deal with it in full, as a trader, when it is necessary for you to purchase produce at a price that will give you a reasonable margin of profit over storing, customs duties, shipping expenses, &c., &c. But it is quite enough to try the patience of any saint when you are only keeping store to pay on bons, à la missionary; for each class of article used in trade—and there are some hundreds of them—has a definite and acknowledged value, but where the trouble comes in is that different articles have the same value; for example, six fish-hooks and one pocket-handkerchief have the same value, or you can make up that value in lucifer matches, pomatum, a mirror, a hair comb, tobacco, or scent in bottles.

Now, if you are a trader, certain of these articles cost you more than others, although they have an identical value to the native, and so it is to your advantage to pay what we