Even
a slave will rather buy him a slave than buy his own liberty. 'I am free
enough,' he says; 'all I want is a fellow to serve me.' The natives of the
Dark Continent are perfectly prepared to acknowledge that work is a curse;
and, so far scripturally, they deem
Labour the symbol of man's punishment.
No Spaniard of the old school would despise more than a negro those
new-fangled notions glorifying work now familiar to stirring and bustling
North Europe. Nor will these people exert themselves until, like the
Barbadians, they must either sweat or starve. Example may do something to
stir them, but the mere preaching of industry is hopeless. I repeat: their
_beau ideal_ of life is to do nothing for six days in the week and to rest
on the seventh. They are quite prepared to keep, after their fashion, 365
sabbaths per annum.
In the depths of Central Africa, where a European shows a white face for
the first time, the wildest tribes hold markets once or twice a week;
these meetings on the hillside or the lake-bank are crowded, and the din
and excitement are extreme. Armed men, women, and children may be seen
dragging sheep and goats, or sitting under a mat-shade through the
livelong days before their baskets and bits of native home-spun, the whole
stock in trade consisting perhaps of a few peppers, a heap of palm-nuts,
or strips of manioc, like pipe-clay.
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