not
melancholy, expression. He was rough but kind to me, and though strict
was just, which was no common feature in an old African hand to one who
had just arrived on the coast.

He kept the factory--we called all houses on the coast factories--as
neat and clean as if it had been a ship. He had the floor of the portion
we dwelt in holystoned every week; and numberless little racks and
shelves were fitted up all over the house. The outside walls glittered
with paint, and the yard was swept clean every morning; and every
Sunday, at eight o'clock and sunset, the ensign was hoisted and lowered,
and an old cannon fired at the word of command. Order and rule were with
Jackson observed from habit, and were strictly enforced by him on all
the natives employed in the factory.

Although I have said the country looked as if uninhabited, there were
numerous villages hidden away in the long grass and brushwood, invisible
at a distance, being huts of thatch or mud, and not so high as the
grass among which they were placed. From these villages came most of our
servants, and also the middlemen, who acted as brokers between us, the
white men, and the negroes who brought ivory and gum and india-rubber
from the far interior for sale. Our trade was principally in ivory,
and when an unusually large number of elephants' tusks arrived upon the
Point for sale, it would be crowded with Bushmen, strange and uncouth,
and hideously ugly, and armed, and then we would be very busy; for
sometimes as many as two hundred tusks would be brought to us at the
same time, and each of these had to be bargained for and paid for by
exchange of cotton cloths, guns, knives, powder, and a host of small
wares.

For some time after my arrival our factory, along with the others on
the coast belonging to Messrs. Flint Brothers, was very well supplied
by them with goods for the trade; but by degrees their shipments became
less frequent, and small when they did come. In spite of repeated
letters we could gain no reason from the firm for this fact, nor could
the other factories, and gradually we found ourselves with an empty
storehouse, and nearly all our goods gone. Then followed a weary
interval, during which we had nothing whatever to do, and day succeeded
day through the long hot season. It was now that I began to feel that
Jackson had become of late more silent and reserved with me than ever
he had been. I noticed, too, that he had contracted a habit of wanderi