254 THE BIRD WATCHER 
“ But witchcraft, wigh its terrors,” says some one. 
True ; but I have lain in a Kaffir village on the banks 
of the Zambesi, within the murmur of its Falls, and 
watched the young men and maidens dancing together 
in the full moon—there seemed little of terror there. 
And I have seen my own boys talking and smoking 
dacha round the camp fires. Where was the brooding 
terror, or the dark cloud? Savages do not anticipate, 
as we do. They feel no uncertain evils, not, at least, 
till they are very near indeed, till the wizard is actually 
“smelling ”’ them out; they live, like the animal, in 
the joy or pain of the moment, and their moments 
have more of joy and less of pain in them than ours. 
But if witchcraft were the “dark cloud that hangs 
for ever over savage life,” that Lord Avebury (Sir 
John Lubbock) tells us it is, have we no dark clouds, 
and have we less or more capacity for feeling them ? 
What is an engagement to dine then, or an enforced 
call? and consider the dark cloud of having to go 
every year, en famille, to the seaside, that hangs over 
the civilised married wretch! Surely the certainty of 
things like these is worse than only the risk of a 
witchcraft exposure, a thing which, when it occurs 
amongst savages (and it was the same with ourselves) 
is often, if not generally, deserved—for evidence of 
which I would refer to Miss Kingsley.’ 
Then take travelling. It is referred to by Lord 
Avebury as one great source of pleasure which 
civilised people enjoy, but which savages do not. 
1 West African Studies, pp. 157-68. 
