348 Notes on Sport and Travel m 



six or seven years from excess of numbers on limited 

 spaces from over-preservation, we may fairly expect 

 that war, epidemics, or cannibalism will counteract 

 all efforts to make two men stand on the ground 

 able to support one. When shall we remember that 

 men are animals ? Philanthropic fancies are not 

 unfrequently horribly cruel in their results, as in the 

 case of the enfranchised negro of the Southern States, 

 who will have to be cleared out as thoroughly as he 

 has been in the Northern, if civilisation is to be 

 maintained. Would that we could replace him by 

 our roughs, male and female, swept from our streets, 

 as we did in Dan De Foe's days, to our mutual 

 comfort ! Oh, for the reinstitution of ' covenanted 

 white servants,' to which the Americans owe so 

 much of their early advancement ! 



The custom, oddly enough, does not seem to 

 depend, beyond a certain point, on intellectual 

 development. Some of the lowest races know it 

 not, and some of the very highest of the lower, like 

 the Kanaka, have barely left it off. And their leav- 

 ing it off seems to be as odd as their taking to it. 

 They were simply shamed out of it by the disgust 

 shown by their white friends, and to this day I 

 doubt whether any converted cannibals regard the 

 habit as in any way criminal. It is bad form, that 

 is all. In time they may be trained to consider it a 

 real sin, particularly now that our paid magistrates 

 have discovered the fact that, because four times 

 seven make twenty-eight, it is dishonest to sell food 



