Every African
traveller knows the meaning of land-purchase in these regions. There are
two ideas peculiar to the negro brain, but apparently inadmissible into
European heads. The first is the non-alienation of land. Niger never parts
with his ground in perpetuity; he has always the mental reservation, while
selling it to a stranger, that the soil and its improvements return to him
by right after the death or the departure of the purchaser. Should the
settler's heirs or assignees desire to remain _in loco_, they are expected
to pay a fresh gratification; the lessor will raise his terms as high as
possible, but public opinion will oblige him to remain content with a
'dash,' or present, equivalent to that paid by the original lessee.
The second idea is even more repugnant to European feelings. In Africa a
born chattel is a chattel for ever: the native phrase is, ''Pose man once
come up slave, he be slave all time.' There is no such thing as absolute
manumission: the unsophisticated _libertus_ himself would not dream of
claiming it. We have on board a white-headed negro in an old and
threadbare Dutch uniform, returning from Java on a yearly pension of
fifteen dollars.
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