Note 41 — Chapter XX

This is by no means an exceptional instance. A favour conferred seems to be generally considered as giving a claim to further kindness. The experience of the missionaries has always been, that if their medical skill availed to restore the sick to health, their patients considered themselves entitled to receive food and raiment, and also to have a right to demand anything else they fancied. Mr Calvert quotes the case of a native whose hand was shattered by the bursting or a musket. The captain of a small fishing vessel took pity on the sufferer, had his hand amputated, and kept him on board for two months. At parting, the patient told the captain that he must give him a musket, in consideration of his having stayed on board so long; and on this being refused, the man went ashore and proved his sense of obligation by burning the drying-houses in which his benefactor stored his fish.