Read "The People of the River" by Edgar Wallace online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
THE house of De Silva, Mackiney and Company is not so well known as, say, the Rockefeller or the house of Marshall Field; nor does it inspire the same confidence in circles of world-finance as, say, the house of Rothschild or Pierpont Morgan. Yet on the coast De Silva and Mackiney (where they dug up the last ethnological abomination, I know not) held a position analogous to all the houses I have named in combination. They were the Rothschilds, the Marshall Fields, the Pierpont Morgans, of that particular coast. It is said that they put up a proposition that they should coin their own money, but a conservative government -- with a small "c" -- politely declined to sanction the suggestion.
They had a finger in all the pies that were baked in that part of the world. They had interests in steamship companies, controlled banks, financed exploration and exploitation companies, helped in the creation of railways, floated gold mines, but before and above all, they sold things to the natives and received in exchange other things of infinitely greater value than they gave. The trading store and the trading caravan were the foundation of the house of De Silva and Mackiney -- De Silva had long since retired from the business, and was the Marquis de Something-or-other of the Kingdom of Portugal -- and even in the days of its greater prosperity native truck was its long suit.