Adventure Magazine Cover, October 1911 — page 51: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

- 3 Gare ay Neihce ee —_ or > wenl Au ov BA lS He lems eee ee 8 Rete SEF tx a A LEAK IN THE JUNCLE TRADE BY THOMAS SAMSON MILLER Somes) BE AGENT in charge of a Niger | T trading-station is no small thing; you're a sort of king over irre- @® sponsible dusky subjects, whomay look on you as an interloper, intrigue against you and trick and plague you until the very smell of a native nauseates you. But Mr. Marshall knew Africans like a book. He was always patient with them; he used to say that savages were grown-up children and had to be handled like children. “Anyway,” he said, “‘it is not the bush- men that make trouble, but the mission- schooled, near-educated, slick hybrid product of civilization’s make-belief philanthropy.”’ Indeed, it was one of the hybrids that ruptured the peace at Igobo and gave Mr. Marshall such a sick time. I was pretty lucky to be sub-agent to Mr. Marshall, for you know, there are some awful rufhans on the river, and you’re sent up there alone with one of them, just the two of you, agent and sub-agent. They do tell awful stories of what happens when the green one and the Old Coaster don’t hit it off together. Mr. Marshall never got mad at me, though I did some mighty foolish things: He always took the trouble to post me up on native superstitions. When I like a fellow, I like him, That’s why I was so sorry for Mr. Marshall when his trouble came. You see, he was married and had a baby, which he had never seen. ‘That sort of cuts a fellow up—makes him think too much of home, so that he doesn’t get any fun out of things. He had a cottage and about twenty acres in the South Downs. He had bought it with his bonuses, which the Company give you at the expiration of your three-year contract. You see, they don’t pay much—just about enough to tide you over the six months in the old country every three years, when you have a bully time getting real beef into you. 997 cComiclhooks CO