ON INSTINCT IN MAN AND ANIMALS. 209 



region is known to him, as well as all the great fea- 

 tures of the vegetation. As he approaches any tract oi 

 country he has been in or near before, many minute 

 indications guide him, but he observes them so cau- 

 tiously that his white companions cannot perceive by 

 what he has directed his course. Every now and 

 then he slightly changes his direction, but he is never 

 confused, never loses himself, for he always feels at 

 home ; till at last he arrives at a well-known country, 

 and directs his course so as to reach the exact spot 

 desired. To the Europeans whom he guides, he seems 

 to have come without trouble, without any special ob- 

 servation, and in a nearly straight unchanging course. 

 They are astonished, and ask if he has ever been the 

 same route before, and when he answers "No," con- 

 clude that some unerring instinct could alone have 

 guided him. But take this same man into another 

 country very similar to his own, but with other streams 

 and hills, another kind of soil, with a somewhat dif- 

 ferent vegetation and animal life ; and after bringing 

 him by a circuitous route to a given point, ask him to 

 return to his starting place, by a straight line of fifty 

 miles through the forest, and he will certainly decline 

 to attempt it, or, attempting it, will more or less com- 

 pletely fail. His supposed instinct does not act out of 

 his own country. 



A savage, even in a new country, has, however, 

 undoubted advantages, from his familiarity with forest 

 life, his entire fearlessness of being lost, his accurate 

 perception of direction and of distance, and he is thus 



p 



