104 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



tribute of unstinted admiration for the disinterested and 

 efficient work being done, alike in the interest of the white 

 man and the black, by the government officials whom I 

 met in East Africa. They are men in whom their country 

 has every reason to feel a just pride. 



We lunched with the American missionaries. Mission 

 work among savages offers many difficulties, and often the 

 wisest and most earnest effort meets with dishearteningly 

 little reward; while lack of common-sense, and of course, 

 above all, lack of a firm and resolute disinterestedness, in- 

 sures the worst kind of failure. There are missionaries who 

 do not do well, just as there are men in every conceivable 

 walk of life who do not do well; and excellent men who 

 are not missionaries, including both government officials 

 and settlers, are only too apt to jump at the chance of criti- 

 cising a missionary for every alleged sin of either omission 

 or commission. Finally, zealous missionaries, fervent in the 

 faith, do not always find it easy to remember that sav- 

 ages can only be raised by slow steps, that an empty adhe- 

 rence to forms and ceremonies amounts to nothing, that 

 industrial training is an essential in any permanent upward 

 movement, and that the gradual elevation of mind and 

 character is a prerequisite to the achievement of any kind 

 of Christianity which is worth calling such. Nevertheless, 

 after all this has been said, it remains true that the good 

 done by missionary effort in Africa has been incalculable. 

 There are parts of the great continent, and among them 

 I include many sections of East Africa, which can be made 

 a white man's country; and in these parts every effort 

 should be made to favor the growth of a large and prosper- 

 ous white population. But over most of Africa the problem 



