THE COUNTRY 347 
grows tired and, like the Arab, silently slips away; or 
after infinite pains have been expended on getting him 
and providing him with tools and teachers, his parents 
come demanding the youth to aid them to gather the 
harvest or to migrate with the flocks, and the disappointed 
teacher sees the last of a promising pupil. 
The East African native ts at heart a nomad still and no 
system of education or of government that does not take 
account of this deeply inbred tendency can do him much 
good. The influence of steady work is the one thing he 
wants in his present state, is indeed the only education 
he is at first fitted for. The influence of labour will make 
itself felt in every direction. It will tend to the material 
prosperity of the country and thus furnish funds which 
the white man can employ in keeping order and establish- 
ing a regular administration. ‘‘Best of all, the habit of 
labour will bring the native into contact with the white 
master, and supposing the native to be (as he is usually in 
British East Africa) justly and firmly treated, it will instill 
a confidence and respect, and hold up to the savage a 
superior standard of comfort which he may be in time 
impelled to obtain for himself.’’ * 
The African’s nomadism is his toughest defence against 
all education, all real progress, no matter who he is or to 
what tribe he belongs, whether he be a mission boy, a 
heathen or a Mohammedan, nothing but force will make 
him stick to his job. Keep him to it, and he likes it. You 
will see him dancing from seven in the evening till mid- 
night, two or three nights in the week, after he has done 
a long day’s work with the hoe in a settler’s shamba. You 
will see him engaging in impromptu races up and down 
Port Florence pier, after he has toiled from twelve to 
sixteen hours without a meal, unloading a steamer in the 
sun. This extraordinary spectacle I have seen myself, 
*Lionel Dech. “Three years in Savage Africa,” p. 526. 
