Once a week Craney would come down the coast in a
clumsy catboat, and we'd take a load up to the town, which was called
"Corazon,"--a considerable town forty miles off, where were French
and Spanish agencies in the cocoa trade.
Every day a cautious, stringy-haired Injun, with a loaded donkey,
would come trotting out of the woods to the shed, or maybe several of
them at odd times. They all acted shy, and kept as far from the Torre
Ananias as the space allowed. Sometimes they wouldn't say anything,
except to state that this bag came from such and such plantations,
and to hope Himself would take, note of it. Then they'd look pleased
and peaceful to have it all written down neatly, and maybe they'd
want the item read out, and then they'd nod and smile and trot away
contented. Sometimes they'd hope Himself was feeling good on the
whole. It didn't seem to strike any of them that the keeper's
position, as they understood it, wasn't right and reasonable.
I used to sit in front of the shed and admire the world. I thought
about the primitive mind, and how the civilised was given to playing
it low on the primitive. I seemed to get around part of their point
of view after a while and see it was reasonable.
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