A PLEA FOR THE NATIVE 371 



supply a stouter guard. Time was when even the posses- 

 sion of a few goats might be fraught with danger and his 

 half-starved cattle had to be secretly fed by day and care- 

 fully hidden in impenetrable thickets by night, if they were 

 to be saved from the all too frequent raids of the ubiquitous 

 Massai. These ever-dreaded warriors are now under 

 control, having their own pasturages assigned them. They 

 may, and do still, proudly maintain that all cattle were given, 

 by the Creator God, to the Massai and that none but they 

 have a right to them. But in practice the fear of losing 

 their own immense and beautiful herds renders them the 

 most conservative and law-abiding of the tribes. Of the 

 East African native then, it may indeed truly be said, 

 that "His lines have fallen unto him in pleasant places and 

 that he has a goodly "heritage." Yet perhaps that it has 

 been too goodly, too easy, and too luxuriant, has been his 

 undoing. It has supplied him with an environment in 

 some respects so favourable that from the very beginning 

 there never have been called forth in him (by the hard insis- 

 tence of mother nature) those sterner qualities that alone 

 have enabled the conquering races to remain masters of 

 the field, in life's long welter of battle. The struggle for 

 existence that has turned half-beasts into whole man has 

 been tempered fatally for him and in consequence some 

 quality of character, some soul-bone or soul-muscle that 

 the fully upstanding man cannot live without, he has never 

 developed. 



The explorers of Africa found themselves confronted by 

 well-nigh insuperable difficulties and dangers. To get on, 

 to force a desperate way forward, to reach some hitherto 

 unknown lake, river, or mountain, these were their goals. 

 In the attainment of them lay the hope of reward and 

 recognition. They were only human, and the swarming 

 black life that opposed or aided their progress, had to be 

 beaten back or forced to do their will, for the white man can 



