120 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



Besides the natives there were a number of Indian traders 

 and the English commissioner and assistant commissioner, 

 with a small body of native soldiers. The latter not a long 

 time before had been just such savages as those round about 

 them, and the change for the better wrought in their phy- 

 sique and morale by the ordered discipline to which they 

 had submitted themselves could hardly be exaggerated. 

 When we arrived, the commissioner and his assistant were 

 engaged in cross-examining some neighboring chiefs as to 

 the cattle sickness. The English rule in Africa has been 

 of incalculable benefit to Africans themselves, and indeed 

 this is true of the rule of most European nations. ' Mistakes 

 have been made, of course, but they have proceeded at least 

 as often from an unwise effort to accomplish too much 

 in the way of beneficence, as from a desire to exploit the 

 natives. Each of the civilized nations that has taken posses- 

 sion of any part of Africa has had its own peculiar good 

 qualities and its own peculiar defects. Some of them have 

 done too much in supervising and ordering the lives of the 

 natives, and in interfering with their practices and customs. 

 The English error, like our own under similar conditions, 

 has, if anything, been in the other direction. The effort 

 has been to avoid wherever possible all interference with 

 tribal customs, even when of an immoral and repulsive 

 character, and to do no more than what is obviously neces- 

 sary, such as insistence upon keeping the peace and prevent- 

 ing the spread of cattle disease. Excellent reasons can be 

 advanced in favor of this policy, and it must always be 

 remembered that a fussy and ill-considered benevolence is 

 more sure to awaken resentment than cruelty itself; while 

 the natives are apt to resent deeply even things that are ob- 

 viously for their ultimate welfare. Yet I cannot help think- 

 ing that with caution and wisdom it would be possible to 

 proceed somewhat farther than has yet been the case in 

 the direction of pushing upward some at least of the East 

 African tribes: and this though I recognize fully that many 

 of these tribes are of a low and brutalized type. Having 



