Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/699

 every year, or every two years at the most, to his own country, and his rooted aversion to agricultural work and carrying loads about the bush.

The pay of the Kruboy averages £1 a month. There are modifications in the way in which this sum is reached; for example, some missionaries pay each man £20 a year, but then he has to find his own chop. Some South West Coast traders pay £8 a year, but they find their boys entirely, and well, in food, and give them a cloth a week. English men-of-war on the West African Station have, like other vessels to take them on to save the white crew, and they pay the Kruboys the same as they pay the white men, i.e, £4 10s. a month with rations. Needless to say, men-of-war are popular, although service on board them cuts our friend off from almost every chance of stealing chickens and other things of which I may not speak, as Herodotus would say. I do not know the manner in which men-of-war pay off the Kruboy, but I think in hard cash. In the circles of society I most mix with on the Coast—the mercantile marine and the trading—he is always paid in goods, in cloth, gin, guns, tobacco, gunpowder, &c., with little concessions to his individual fancy in the matter, for each of these articles has a known value, and just as one of our coins can be changed, so you can get here change for a gun or any other trade article.

The Kruboy much prefers being paid off in goods. I well remember an exquisite scene between Captain and King Koffee of the Kru Coast when the subject of engaging boys was being shouted over one voyage out. The Captain at that time thought I was a W.W.T.A.A. and ostentatiously wanted Koffee to let him pay off the boys he was engaging to work the ship in money, and not in gin and gunpowder. King Koffee's face was a study. If Captain, whom he knew of old, had stood on his head and turned bright blue all over with yellow spots, before his eyes, it would not have been anything like such a shock to his Majesty. "What for good him ting, Cappy?" he said, interrogation and astonishment ringing in every word, "What for good him ting for we country, Cappy? I suppose you gib gin, tobacco, gun he be fit for trade, but money" Here his Majesty's feelings flew ahead of the Royal command of language, great as that was, and he expectorated with profound feeling and expression. Captain ’s expressive countenance was the battle ground of despair and grief at being thus forced to have anything to do with a traffic unpopular in missionary circles. He however controlled his feelings sufficiently to carefully arrange