willingly pay double for Portuguese goods, as suspecting the Dutch to be of less value, buying them only for want of better."[1] I could give you also some beautiful examples of what the Dutch say of the Portuguese and the English, and of what the French say of both, but I have not space; moreover, it is all very like what you can read to-day in things about rival nations and traders out in West Africa. I myself was commonly called by the Portuguese there a pirate because I was English, and that was the proper thing to call the English,—there was no personal incivility meant; and I quote the above passage just to impress on you that when you are reading about West African affairs either ancient or modern, you must make allowance for this habit of speaking of rival nations—it is the climate. And although the Portuguese and the Dutch may choose to ignore the French early discoveries, yet they both showed a keen dread of the French from their being so popular with the natives, and did their utmost to oust them from the West Coast, which they succeeded in doing for a long period. And then again to this day, when a trader in West Africa finds a place where trade is good, he does not cable home to the newspapers about it. If it is necessary that any lying should be done about that place he does it himself; but what he strives most to do is to keep its existence totally unknown to other people; sooner or later some other trader comes along and discovers it, and then that place becomes unhealthy for one or the other of its discoverers,—and that is the climate again. Thus by the light of my own dispassionate observations in West Africa, I am quite ready to believe in that early French discovery; and I
- ↑ Vas Conselo's Life of King João.
