For each black man, and for each six months: --
Tobacco, 6 lbs.; salt, pepper, etc., 5 lbs......................11
Presents which will have to be made him from time to time... ....6
_________
Total for six months
(or at the rate of 3 lbs. per month).............17
Presents and Articles for Payment.--It is of the utmost importance to a
traveller to be well and judiciously supplied with these: they are his
money, and without money a person can no more travel in Savagedom than in
Christendom. It is a great mistake to suppose that savages will give
their labour or cattle in return for anything that is bright or new: they
have their real wants and their fashions as much as we have; and, unless
what a traveller brings, meets either the one or the other, he can get
nothing from them, except through fear or compulsion.
The necessities of a savage are soon satisfied; and, unless he belongs to
a nation civilised enough to live in permanent habitations, and secure
from plunder, he cannot accumulate, but is only able to keep what he
actually is able to carry about his own person. Thus, the chief at Lake
Ngami told Mr. Andersson that his beads would be of little use, for the
women about the place already "grunted like pigs" under the burdens of
those that they wore, and which they had received from previous
travellers. These are matters of serious consideration to persons who
propose to travel with a large party, and who must have proportionably
large wants.
Speaking of presents and articles for payment, as of money, it is
essential to have a great quantity and variety of small change, wherewith
the traveller can pay for small services, for carrying messages, for
draughts of milk, pieces of meat, etc. Beads, shells, tobacco, needles,
awls, cotton caps, handkerchiefs, clasp-knives, small axes, spear and
arrow heads, generally answer this purpose.
There is infinite fastidiousness shown by savages in selecting beads,
which, indeed, are their jewellery; so that valuable beads, taken at
hap-hazard, are much more likely to prove failures than not. It would
always be well to take abundance (40 or 50 lbs. weight goes but a little
way) of the following cheap beads, as they are very generally
accepted,--dull white, dark blue, and vermilion red, all of a small size.
It is the ignorance of what are the received articles of payment in a
distant country, and the using up of those that are taken, which, more
than any other cause, limits the journeyings of an explorer: the demands
of each fresh chief are an immense drain upon his store.
Summary.--To know the minimum weight for which a proposed expedition must
find means of transport, the omitted figures must be supplied in the
following schedule, the others must be corrected where required, and the
whole must be added together.