Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



Note from the same book, by S. Bleek, daughter of the 

 well-known Dr. Bleek, of the Grey Library at Cape 

 Town (1870). 



" Bushmen are called liars and thieves all over the Colony, 

 but all those who stayed with us were truthful and very 

 honest. On no occasion did they steal even a pocket-knife 

 lost in the garden, or fruit from the trees. They might 

 have taken sheep from hostile farmers, but they would 

 never rob a friend or neighbour. They were cleanly in 

 their habits, and most particular about manners. ... As 

 a people they were grateful and revengeful, independent 

 in spirit, excellent fighters — who preferred death to cap- 

 tivity. . . . Captives were sometimes made servants, but 

 not often well-treated, nor did they take to a settled life 

 easily. Even kind masters found their longing for freedom 

 hard to conquer." 



The Nechilli Eskimo 



From Amundsen's North West Passage, vol. i, p. 294. 

 (Constable, 1908.) 



" We were suddenly brought face to face here with 

 a people from the Stone Age : we were abruptly carried 

 back several thousand years in the advance of human 

 progress, to people who as yet knew no other method of 

 procuring fire than by rubbing two pieces of wood together, 

 and who with great difficulty managed to get their food 

 just lukewarm, over the seal-oil flame on a stone slab, 

 while we cooked our food in a moment with our modern 

 cooking apparatus. We came here, with our most in- 

 genious and most recent inventions in the way of firearms, 

 to people who still used lances, bows and arrows of reindeer 

 horn. . . However, we should be wrong if from the 



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