At Cape Palmas we engaged thirty so-called Krumen: only seven were ready
to accompany us, and the rest came nearly two months behind time. This is
the farming season, and the people do not like to leave their field-lands.
Jack Davis, headman, chief, crimp and 'promising' party, had been warned
to be ready by Mr. R. B. N. Walker, whose name and certificate he wore
upon a big silver crescent; but as _Senegal_ appeared on Sunday instead of
Saturday, he gravely declared that his batch had retired to their
plantations--in black-man's English, 'small countries.' We were compelled
to make an advance, a measure unknown of old, and to pay more than double
hire for working on the Gold Coast. These races, Kruboys, Grebos, and
their cognates, have not improved during the last score of years. Their
headmen were old hands approaching the fifties: now they are youths of
twenty-five. The younger sort willingly engaged for three years; now they
begin to notch their tallies for every new moon, and they wax home-sick
after the tenth month. Once they were content to carry home a seaman's
chest well filled with 'chow-chow' and stolen goods; in these days they
must have ready money to deal with the Bristol barques.
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