It was a curious life, less distasteful than I had expected, but very hard work, for I had to be in the store soon after daybreak and remained until near sunset, with only a short interval at midday. I would earnestly recommend any explorer who wishes to attain to an intimate knowledge of the people amongst whom he is dwelling, to open a store and trade with them, for by so doing he will obtain an acquaintance with their language, appearance, dress, habits, tastes, disposition, and the natural productions of their country, which it is practically impossible to reach under any other circumstances. To the trader, as to one engaged in a rational and intelligible pursuit, the native exhibits himself as he is, without any more reserve or deception than the particular transaction seems to require, while to the professed explorer he shows himself full of suspicion and perversity. The mere pursuit of knowledge he neither understands nor believes in, but attributes to the investigator some hidden and sinister motive for his inquiries; whereas the actions and objects of the trader, differing in nowise from those of native merchants, are perfectly comprehensible to him. Hence the trader is treated by the native with a frank familiarity in great contrast to the cautious reserve that is exhibited towards the traveller, the official or the missionary. It thus happened that, before I had been ashore a month, I had begun to get some insight into the manners and customs of the negro as applied to commerce. My natural facility in picking up languages, too, to which I have already referred, stood me in good stead, for I soon acquired a quite useful collection of phrases in the local dialects, particularly in the barbarous and unmusical Efé language which was spoken around Quittáh, and the hardly more euphonious Adángme of the people who came from beyond the Volta River. I also began to learn, but in a more systematic manner, the simpler and really melodious language of Hausa, of which Pereira had on his shelves a dictionary and some selections by Dr. Schön. This was indeed less useful than the local tongues, but I was not without the means of exercising it, for it was spoken by the native troops, or Hausa constabulary, who were constantly making small purchases at the store, and by the itinerant merchants from the interior, whose visits were somewhat rare, but who, when they did come, were rather extensive buyers. It was from one of these travelling merchants that I received the first of the series of impulses that finally sent me wandering into the unknown interior. This man, a Hausa named Amádu Dandaúra, arrived at Quittáh when I had been there about two months, in company with his two sons and a small caravan of slaves.