178 JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS

been washed up in the village like the last line of
seaweed on a beach. One could get porcelain pans
and pails, knives crudely decorated with silver alloy
and brass to catch a stranger's jackdaw eye; even the
common curved cutlass for hacking a path through
the bush was offered gaudily got up, its handle
covered with the alloy from Napoleonic coins, the
blade as blunt as wood. It must have been the pure
spirit of commerce which led them to manufacture
these objects (they could not have encountered white
tourists here twice in ten years), or perhaps this was
the obscure factory from which the gimcrackery on
sale in Konakry and Dakar, in Paris itself, came; we
had stumbled on an industrial centre in the furthest
corner of one of the least known of the French
colonies. Perhaps even the cannibals on the Ivory
Coast were now chiefly occupied in manufacturing
baits for tourists.

The carriers had only marched for half a day, but
they had eaten before they left Zorzor and there was
trouble in the air. They kept sulkily apart from my
hut, all except Babu and Amah., talking in high angry
voices* I was no longer a patriarch among my
retainers; I was the unjust employer; there was bad
blood somewhere which had to be let outu It worked
a little on the nerves not knowing what complaint
they would make or when they would bring it me;
and the worst of it was that I could not lose my
temper, I must remain cheerful and good-humoured,
I had to laugh at them however much I wanted to
curse them.

In the afternoon I lay down but I couldn't sleep. A
Httle while before sundown, when I was sponging