TO LAKE NAIVASHA 201 



running from the foe that has seized one of its number, and 

 a buck will cover a doe in the brief interval between the 

 first and the second alarm, from hunter or lion. Zebra 

 will make much noise when one of their number has been 

 killed; but their fright has vanished when once they be- 

 gin their barking calls. 



Death by violence, death by cold, death by starvation 

 these are the normal endings of the stately and beautiful 

 creatures of the wilderness. The sentimentalists who prattle 

 about the peaceful life of nature do not realize its utter 

 mercilessness; although all they would have to do would 

 be to look at the birds in the winter woods, or even at the 

 insects on a cold morning or cold evening. Life is hard 

 and cruel for all the lower creatures, and for man also 

 in what the sentimentalists call a "state of nature." The 

 savage of to-day shows us what the fancied age of gold of 

 our ancestors was really like; it was an age when hunger, 

 cold, violence, and iron cruelty were the ordinary accom- 

 paniments of life. If Matthew Arnold, when he expressed 

 the wish to know the thoughts of Earth's " vigorous, primi- 

 tive " tribes of the past, had really desired an answer to his 

 question, he would have done well to visit the homes of the 

 existing representatives of his "vigorous, primitive" ances- 

 tors, and to watch them feasting on blood and guts; while 

 as for the "pellucid and pure" feelings of his imaginary 

 primitive maiden, they were those of any meek, cowlike 

 creature who accepted marriage by purchase or of con- 

 venience, as a matter of course. 



It was to me a perpetual source of wonderment to 

 notice the difference in the behavior of different individuals 

 of the same species, and in the behavior of the same in- 



