290	JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS
they compared favourably with some of the British
Government's rates in Sierra Leone, were not likely
to bring prosperity to the Liberian tribes. The wages
of tappers ran from eightpence to a shilling and a
penny a day, of clearers from sevenpence to a shilling.
Out of this they had to buy their own food, but not
to the benefit of local trade. They must buy at the
Firestone stores and Firestone's imported their own
rice, so that it had to be sold at a rate one and six-
pence in the hundredweight dearer than it could be
bought in Monrovian stores, and the rate in Mon-
rovian stores was already much dearer than anywhere
else in Liberia.
Little wonder, then, if in the past the Liberian
Legislature had chosen to look on the white man as
somebody to be squeezed in return, and nobody can
say they have not shown imagination in their
methods. At one time a German shipping agent was
the chief sufferer. His chauffeur killed a dog and the
next day was arrested at the suit of the owner. The
German agent was brought into court, and the owner
in evidence said that last year her bitch, which she
valued at ten dollars, had had five puppies which had
fetched ten dollars each: that in a week or two she
would have borne five more puppies, which she would
have sold for the same figure. The court fined the
German sixty dollars.
On another occasion the same agent was fetched
out of bed by the police to meet a claim for damages
suffered by a Liberian woman who was travelling in
an Italian steamer for which the German line acted.
She had been scratched by a monkey belonging to
another passenger while the steamer was in Spanish