I should add that the Monomotapan character is such that in
proportion to wealth a man's virtues increase, and it is remarkable that
nearly all those who suffer the species of imprisonment I have described
are of the poorer classes of society.
Though they are so reasonable, and indeed afford so excellent a model to
ourselves in most of their social relations, the people of Monomotapa
have, I confess, certain customs which I have never clearly understood,
and which my increasing study of them fails to explain to me.
Thus, in matters which, with us, are thought susceptible of positive
proof (such as the taste and quality of cooking, or the mental abilities
of a fellow-citizen) the Monomotapans establish their judgment in a
transcendental or super-rational manner. The cooking in a restaurant or
hotel is with them excellent in proportion, not to the taste of the viands
subjected to it, but to the rental of the premises. And when a man desires
the most delicious food he does not consider where he has tasted such food
in the past, but rather the situation and probable rateable value of the
eating-house which will provide him with it. Nay, he is willing--if he
understands that that rateable value is high--to pay far more for the same
article than he would in a humbler hostelry.
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