l8o JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS

every town for new carriers at the Government rate.
If they remained firm and took their pay and left us,
we should have to cut straight through the forest
towards Monrovia. I wasn't sure that my money
would last even then. If they had only known it, they
had all the aces in their hand.

Kolieva said they wanted to talk to me. They
wanted more money. I pretended not to understand
him. I said I was willing to lend anyone a little money
on his wages. Vande had already borrowed sixpence
at Zigita. How much would they like? Kolieva grew
more embarrassed; he said the Government wage for
a carrier was a shilling a day. He was quite right of
course; the proper wage was a shilling, though I
believe it was legal to contract over a period at a
smaller rate, and actually no one in Liberia, except a
few unfortunate travellers taking carriers from town
to town, ever pays the proper wage. Certainly not
Government officials, who can generally get carriers
for no payment at all.

I said that the Government wage didn't include
food, and I was paying for their food. They could not
tell that their food only came to about twopence a
head; but they stood in a surly circle, not really listen-
ing to anything. It was no good arguing the merits
of the case. Besides, the merits were all on their side.
I was exploiting them like all their other masters, and
it would have been no comfort to them to know that
I could not afford not to exploit them and that I was
a little ashamed of it. I pretended to be puzzled, to
understand nothing of what they meant; they had
contracted ... I told somebody to fetch Vande and
he came I asked him what it was they vrerei1,