for had he been sick his master must have supported
him. Occasionally some of the free blacks become slaves voluntarily by
going through the simple but significant ceremony of breaking a spear in
the presence of their future master. A Portuguese officer, since dead,
persuaded one of the Makololo to remain in Tette, instead of returning to
his own country, and tried also to induce him to break a spear before
him, and thus acknowledge himself his slave, but the man was too shrewd
for this; he was a great elephant doctor, who accompanied the hunters,
told them when to attack the huge beast, and gave them medicine to ensure
success. Unlike the real Portuguese, many of the half-castes are
merciless slave-holders; their brutal treatment of the wretched slaves is
notorious. What a humane native of Portugal once said of them is
appropriate if not true: "God made white men, and God made black men, but
the devil made half-castes."

The officers and merchants send parties of slaves under faithful headmen
to hunt elephants and to trade in ivory, providing them with a certain
quantity of cloth, beads, etc., and requiring so much ivory in return.
These slaves think that they have made a good thing of it, when they kill
an elephant near a village, as the natives give them beer and meal in
exchange for some of the elephant's meat, and over every tusk that is
brought there is expended a vast amount of time, talk, and beer. Most of
the Africans are natural-born traders, they love trade more for the sake
of trading than for what they make by it. An intelligent gentleman of
Tette told us that native traders often come to him with a tusk for sale,
consider the price he offers, demand more, talk over it, retire to
consult about it, and at length go away without selling it; next day they
try another merchant, talk, consider, get puzzled and go off as on the
previous day, and continue this course daily until they have perhaps seen
every merchant in the village, and then at last end by selling the
precious tusk to some one for even less than the first merchant had
offered. Their love of dawdling in the transaction arises from the self-
importance conferred on them by their being the object of the wheedling
and coaxing of eager merchants, a feeling to which even the love of gain
is subordinate.

The native medical profession is reasonably well represented. In
addition to the regular practitioners, who are a really useful class, and
know