IN THE SHETLANDS 253 
contrary, can doubt that more happiness enters into 
the life of most savages than into that of most civilised 
men? Not I, who have seen the Kaffirs, unblessed 
by our rule, and read Wallace’s account of the 
Papuans in The Malay Archipelago, which, to show 
that I am not talking nonsense, I will here quote: 
“These forty black, naked, mop-headed savages 
seemed intoxicated with joy and excitement. Not 
one of them could remain still fora moment... . A 
few presents of tobacco made their eyes glisten ; they 
would express their satisfaction by grins and shouts, 
by rolling on deck, or by a headlong leap overboard. 
Schoolboys on an unexpected holiday, Irishmen at 
a fair, or midshipmen on shore, would give but faint 
idea of the exuberant animal enjoyment of these 
people.” The grown Papuan, therefore, is happier— 
so it struck Wallace—than the civilised schoolboy. 
It is a well-chosen point of comparison. We are not 
ashamed, most of us, to look back to our boyhood as 
to a state of high-tide happiness that, upon the whole, 
with a fluctuation or two not quite in favour of the 
intellect, has been receding ever since ; but we kick at 
thinking savages happier than ourselves. Kick as 
we may, the Arab on his horse or his swift dromedary, 
the Lap on his snow-shoes, the Esquimaux in his 
canoe, the Indian chasing the buffalo—as he used to 
do—or the Pacific Islander surf-riding, carry it, I 
believe, as far as sheer happiness is concerned, high 
over the civilised man with all his greater powers of 
mind and his advanced morality. 
