If they were West African Portuguese of the olden time, he was fully aware that they would be using slave labor for everything, and he tried to figure out if it was possible, even with slave porters, to carry concentrates down to the Coast and leave a sufficient margin for profit. Even with the most liberal estimates he could not make it so, taking into account the slow-sailing ships, the crude smelting methods, and the lower prices of the old days. Remained then the passage of the creek and river channels, and if these old Portuguese had found a waterway, why, then, so could he. So next day he set out to hunt for a quay, or any other traces of shipping ore, or perhaps some evidences of boat-building, and he pressed his way through vine and bush, and over crag and scree, till the scorching heat had drained his lean body of moisture, and his knees zigzagged beneath him through sheer weakness and weariness. Then he made a discovery, and sat down, and for the moment felt faint and discouraged. He had nearly walked in onto the top of a native village. He had been going down-wind, or the smoke of their fires would have warned him earlier. As it was, the bark of a scavenger dog gave him the first hint of the village's nearness, or he would have descended onto its roofs. It lay beneath a small bluff, and its houses so assimilated with the rest of the forest that even close at hand it was hard to pick out the human dwellings. It was the hour of heat, when only Englishmen and dogs (according to the old libel) are wont to be abroad, and the village slept. Even the dogs found the heat too great for wakefulness, so that only the Englishman carried an open eye. But the smell of the place advertised it as a village of fishers, and a closer scrutiny showed the harvest of the river, gutted, and strung up upon the stripped boughs of trees to dry in the outrageous sun-heat. There are always markets for these dried river fish throughout all West Africa. Carter backed into thicker cover, and waited till the sun began once more to cast a shadow, and the village woke. First the dogs opened their eyes and began their endless scavengers' prowl. Then the children came out to play in the dust. Next the women roused to do the village work. And last of all, the men emerged from the clumps of bush, which one had to accept as huts, spear-armed all of them, and sat in the patches of purple shade, and oversaw all, to approve and direct. "You lazy hounds," said the Englishman to himself, "I should like to set you to shoveling ore all day, and signing checks all night for your women's bonnet bills. But then," he reminded himself with a sigh, "there are some women these days who insist on working themselves, however hard you may press your services."