the purchase of two or three wives to care for him and produce him wealth, his work is done. From fourteen years to twenty-five is his working period. Before that time a child, after that time he is a man of means. What wealth comes later comes through the women and their labor, and through trade.

We have already stated that the Bantu is notably acquisitive. Wealth, apart from women and slaves, is counted mostly in cloth. One of the chief aims in life is to accumulate cloth, not for use as clothing, but as evidence of wealth and for the final display when the man dies and is buried. Among the Lower Congo tribes the dead body is wrapped in piece after piece of cloth, until the body disappears in a mass of wrappings made of scores of pieces, each piece consisting of eight or sixteen yards, as the case may be. Young men have cloth, and it is most interesting to look through the boxes of the “boys.” At Basoko we were robbed, and the authorities instituted a search. I was asked to inspect the boxes of all the workmen on the place. Without warning, every man and boy had to open his trunk, chest, tin box, or other store. I saw young fellows of no more than sixteen or seventeen years who had a dozen pieces of good cloth carefully folded away, watches, jewelry, ornaments, knives, dishes—every kind of white man’s tradestuff that could be imagined. When they are thirty those “boys” will be rich men, with women, slaves, and piles of stuff.

The government of the Free State has issued coins for native use. There are large coppers of the value of one, two, five, and ten centimes. There are silver coins of half-franc, franc, two franc, and five franc value. But these coins have no circulation beyond Leopoldville. In the Kasai district and the Upper Congo every commercial transaction is done by barter.

Certain things are so constantly in u