376 THE LAND OF THE LION 
gain the public ear. The utter nonsense, the untruthful 
rubbish, that appears in the English and American papers 
and magazines on things East African in general, and on 
its natives and game in particular, disgust and dishearten 
them. They talk little and write less. But they love the 
native. It is easy, very easy to see what this native lacks. 
As I have said, his main idea is to get food; he has no thought 
for the morrow and this is the inevitable consequence of 
his lack of memory. He learns quickly and as quickly 
forgets, and human memory is a slow-growing plant. He 
has no traditions reaching far back into the past. What 
traces of tradition he has puzzle him, as completely as 
they puzzle you. The reasons for the things he does he 
cannot give you; he is incapable of measuring time; he 
never knows his own age; he is an atheist pure and simple, 
having no idea of God, or the faintest conception what- 
ever of any future life. Even when he has become a declared 
Mohammedan, his new religion has not in the least awakened 
in him, as yet, any desire for a life beyond. He believes 
in witches, and dreads, while he consults, the witch doctor. 
He has no sacred places (if we except the metalliferous cliffs 
of Elgon near which the Massai, with probable truth, say 
that a man cannot stand and live during a storm). He 
seldom buries his dead, and the hyena is his only under- 
taker. In the case of a great chief’s death, or where a man 
or woman leave behind them many children, the body 
may sometimes be buried in a shallow grave and possibly 
a goat or sheep is killed above it. Missionaries I know 
have fancied that in this rare ceremony they have dis- 
covered some signs of a rudimentary sacrificial idea. But 
I must confess that the reason which the natives insisted 
on giving, when I questioned them particularly and repeat- 
edly on this subject, seems to me to be the more likely one. 
They always said it was to prevent the hyenas from dig- 
ging for the body underneath. 
