CURIOUS COMMERCE

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXVII, Issue 5372, 3 September 1904, Page 10

CURIOUS COMMERCE

STRANGE EXPORTS AND IMPORTS. TRADE WITH FOREIGN AND SAVAGE COUNTRIES. It is a curious list. of things that Uncle Sam sends to savage and halfcivilised countries, and as curious a list of things which ho takes from those countries in return. In far-off Uganda, where the lions roar, as tho train passes on the new railroad and the engineer has to slow down now and then because a hippo potamus gets on the track, the natives buy American kerosene, and find it useful not only for illuminating purposes but for annointing their shining black bodies to make them shine more. They have also taken a fancy lately to cheap photographs, and a well to do savage'becomes a society leader when he sets one up in his hut. They also like watches —the kind which take half an hour to wind up—and aro beginning to make a market for them. In return the Uganda natives send America a peculiar gum which exudes from what they call tho incense tree.. This gum smells with a clean, pun gen. smell, and is the chief ingredient in the incense used in churches. For centuries this gum has been exported from this section of Africa. It is the “olibanum” of science and the: frankincense of history- ■ Inferior kinds of incenso gum are. found in India and Arabia, but tile Bast African sorb is the most in demand ■ and the one which the United States buys. S Savages delight in watches and clocks, but the clocks must have a loud tick. The story is told of a olookmaking concern which determined to got a share of tho West African trade, whore .tho natives had’ taken kindly to an-infcrior brand, of clocks sent out by a rival house. A better clock was manufactured and ivent ■ out to bo sold at the 1 same price -as ■ the, goods of the rival concern. To the astonishment of. the manufacturers they tailed to sell. *■ 1 Investigations showed that the cheap clocks of tho first house had a loud lick, and a gong which struck the hour like a fire alarm bell. Thereupon the second firm manufactured a clock with a still louder tick and a still more resounding gong in the striking parts, and soon captured tho trade. The clocks and watches of savage and semi-civilised peoples come mostly from Connecticut and Birmingham. Connecticut having a practical monopoly in supplying the watches. Egypt sends to the United Stales and England a curious article of commerce, consisting of fragments of mummies—which aro ground up and used in mixing paints for artists. Tho mummies are not the finely preserved royal remains from sepulchers of dead king but the mummies of tho common people who passed away two thousand to throe thousand veal's ago and were embalmed less carefully and laid away in loss costly tombs than their more fortunate fellows.

Poppy oil is used to mix the .peculiar brown paint obtained from pulverised mummy. In return, Egypt impon quantities of imitation soarabol, little stone charms, which look like a beetle on top and have on the smooth under side the hieroglyphics of some great prince who reigned in tho Nile Valley when the world was young. Tho Americans say these false scarabels are manufactured in Birmingham, but the English declare that they come from Connecticut, where they are made by machinery and shipped in barrels to he planted by Arabian guides in tho desert sands and "discovered'’ in the sight of confiding tourists, who pay a good price for them. The United States docs a flourishing business selling patent medicines to the untutored savage, who is broil-

into contact with civilisation. The savage takes kindly to patent medicines. Imported first by white settlers for their= own use on the African coast, the medicines have found favour with tho natives, and many a stalwart chief perhaps keeps in his hut a bottle of “Somebody’s Celebrated Nerve Tonic,” of which he takes a dose before lie goes out slave hunting. In return for nerve tonics the sable savages of Africa send to America invoices of some of their own medicines, not patented, but highly prized in the dark continent. Among these is the poisonous ordeal beans. In western Africa these beans are valued by the natives for the curious property they

.have of exposing witches. It any on* in the tribe is suspected of practising witchcraft, he or she must swallow a docoction made from the bean, and the tribe sits around to observe the result. If tho suspected person is guilty he dieshut if the stomach refuses to retain the decoction, ,ho is declared guiltless and the voodooinan ; who ao oused him is put to death instead.