Page:What I Know Of The Labour Traffic.djvu/28

25 Then on the instant came from the canoes one unanimous cry of "gammon!" I was never more surprised in my life, and diligently enquired of the captain afterwards as to what he thought of this use of the English slang word, and whether the natives could know its real meaning. On which he petulently [sic] said that he supposed "some adjective missionary fellow had been among them!" If that be so it is the most valuable missionary intelligence I have ever received. Then did the captain, because he would not be baulked, begin to play on a jews harp. No doubt he had been accustomed thus to play the syren, but to my infinite amazement, some of the natives began to make much more accordant music in response on their own Panpipes! If "gammon" was scathing, scornful, satire, the pandean pipe playing was sweetest humour. The captain seeing that nothing could be done, observed a squall coming on, so he gave the word "bout ship," and we continued our course, and the natives paddled home, no doubt to thread small beads, tell tales, and go to sleep before a fire under the cocoa palms.

This matter of the small colored glass bead remained a mystery to me for a long time. Here were full grown men willing to sell themselves for a thimble full of glass beads! What could it mean? Here were women parting with all control over their own souls and bodies for as many glass beads as you could hold between thumb and fingers; you could buy a splendid ammón or canoe capable of holding 20 men for six penn'orth of glass beads; you could get 10,000 cocoa nuts f.o.b. for eighteen pence in the form of glass beads.

What could be the meaning of folly so obvious to the commercial mind? I will answer that question.

One day when the weather was unpropitious, the heat excessive, and life very dull and heavy on board ship, and hardly worth living, the captain gave our women a present of those beautiful glass beads, 10,000 of which you can buy for 2s. 8d. Instantly the face of all creation was changed; joy took the place of deadly dullness, every woman was happy; and when women are glad, men cannot be sorrowful. On another occasion we took on board a youthful naked woman, without the least speck of ornament or cicatrisation or tattooing, and she was so melancholy for the first day or two that I began to suspect that she had been carried away against her will. I made strictest enquiry, and found that she had come for love; she had climbed out of the sea into the boat of her own free accord and would not be turned out of it. What, therefore, was the matter? She found herself miserable, poor and naked amongst some of her own sisters whose necks and arms and loins were covered with the precious glass bead, and she was shy, demure, lonely, and full of woe. She was very pretty, and the captain, who was not insensible to the charms of female beauty, gave her a small match box full of beads. As if by magic she was a changed being; it was soon found that she had a peculiarly sweet voice, and five minutes later she was leaning against this one, then against that, giving opinions, and in the most familar [sic] way taking an