The firm began to look
askance at such a consul; and worse was behind. A number of deeds being
brought to the consulate for registration, Zembsch detected certain
transfers of land in which the date, the boundaries, the measure, and the
consideration were all blank. He refused them with an indignation which
he does not seem to have been able to keep to himself; and, whether or
not by his fault, some of these unfortunate documents became public. It
was plain that the relations between the two flanks of the German
invasion, the diplomatic and the commercial, were strained to bursting.
But Weber was a man ill to conquer. Zembsch was recalled; and from that
time forth, whether through influence at home, or by the solicitations of
Weber on the spot, the German consulate has shown itself very apt to play
the game of the German firm. That game, we may say, was twofold,--the
first part even praiseworthy, the second at least natural. On the one
part, they desired an efficient native administration, to open up the
country and punish crime; they wished, on the other, to extend their own
provinces and to curtail the dealings of their rivals. In the first,
they had the jealous and diffident sympathy of all whites; in the second,
they had all whites banded together against them for their lives and
livelihoods.
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