le property of the
Chiefs and freemen were their huts, canoes, and slaves, and the rude
instruments they used in war and hunting. The unfortunate slaves were
bought and sold, captured in war and were often killed and eaten. One
slave was worth so many goats, lances, or knives, and one large canoe
would buy several women. Legislation rested with the Chiefs and trial by
ordeal was common, but always so arranged that the result could be
controlled by the judge. This is not the place however, to describe
these interesting, if horrible practices.

Now at present the people are rich beyond the wildest dreams of their
ancestors for the value of the property of the great Chiefs has greatly
increased, since they have dealt with Europeans. Again the Chief of a
small village containing 1000 men supplies 1000 kilogrammes of rubber
each month to the State for 50 centimes a kilo. To collect this amount
takes two or three days; each year therefore the village receives L240
for collecting a substance of no value at all to the natives whose daily
routine in the meantime is scarcely affected at all. The natives used
ivory chiefly to make war horns, but some of the Chiefs had so much that
they constructed fences of fine points round their mud huts little
thinking that in the white man's country, those useless tusks would be
worth a small mountain of salt. Now they exchange them for clothes,
cloth, salt, and other useful commodities. The lucky owner of a canoe,
it is true, can no longer buy three or four slaves with it, but he can
use it to transport produce or to catch fish, for which he is well paid.
Again compare the lot of the slave in the past with his present
condition. He was liable to the most terrible fate at any moment; now he
can enter the army, work in the plantations or remain safely in his
village and do a few hours' work each month. There is however, another
force acting which we should hardly expect would affect the mind of a
savage. He is greatly influenced by a desire to ascend the social
ladder at the summit of which, is of course, the white man, and anyone
having direct dealings with him, at once knows himself to be superior to
the naked cannibal of the forest. The servant, or _boy_, of the white
man, holds a high rank and considers himself to be quite another species
of man than his cousin, who is still uncivilised. So also the soldiers
and workers in the plantations, who come into daily contact with the
officials. All