He went on to tell with what prudent and fatherly care those in control of the missions had headed off the rapacious traders and concession hunters, who follow in the missionary’s track, by obtaining from the native chiefs exclusive rights strategically based upon the routes of trade, such for instance as the building of landing-stages at the junction of rivers, and the setting up of white settlements on the high table-lands of the interior. As a consequence the economic future of the country was controlled, not indeed by the missionary society itself, but by a humane-minded organization of business interests working with and through it. And under this happy co-operation the Native Industries Company in the Ray River territory to the north of Puto-Congo (not then the familiar name it has become since) had opened up commercial relations at the cost of only a few score thousand pounds, which in the near future might be worth millions. They were already paying an interest on shares which compared favourably with larger ventures of longer date; and as the total number of shares was comparatively small, they offered to early investors a great future. And so Mr. Trimblerigg, who had a taste for speculative transfer, sold out and reinvested a few hundred pounds in Native Industries Limited; and receiving his dividends thereafter on the scale promised, thought very little further about it, except as something sound which carried with it the larger hope of value that might increase. The sense in which he thought very little about it, was as to the actual source of its profits--oil, rubber, copra, or ivory--the methods of its working, and the men who worked it, or what it really did for the native beyond making him more accessible to the influence of missions and of trade. As to that last, a very slight preliminary inquiry had satisfied him that it was so; and there he left it. It never occurred to Mr. Trimblerigg, who was eloquently opposed to corporal punishment in his own country for crimes of violence and such like, to inquire whether corporal punishment played any part in making his dividends from Native Industries Limited nearer ten than five per cent per annum. And why indeed should it occur to him? The shareholder system, on which modern trade is run, does not prompt such mental occurrence; and where so many millions are satisfied that their responsibilities end in the acceptance of the reports of their directors, can any particular blame attach to one, however eminent in the organization of the mission field, if he also was satisfied, and become in consequence forgetful?