SAVAGES AND CHILDREN. 463 



superior ; although if we take for comparison a child belong- 

 ing to a civilized race at a sufficiently early age, the parallel 

 is fair enough. Thus, they have no steadiness of purpose. 

 Speaking of the Dogrib Indians, we found, says Richardson,* 

 " by experience, that however high the reward they expected 

 to receive on reaching their destination, they could not be 

 depended on to carry letters. A slight difficulty, the prospect 

 of a banquet on venison, or a sudden impulse to visit some 

 friend, were sufficient to turn them aside for an indefinite 

 length of time." Even among the comparatively civilised 

 South Sea Islanders this childishness was very apparent. 

 " Their tears indeed, f like those of children, were always 

 ready to express any passion that was strongly excited, and 

 like those of children they also appeared to be forgotten as 

 soon as shed/' D'Urville also mentions that Tai-wanga, a 

 New Zealand chief, cried like a child, because the sailors 

 spoilt his favorite cloak, by powdering it with flour. J It is 

 not, says Cook, " indeed strange that the sorrows of these 

 artless people should be transient,, any more than that their 

 passions should be suddenly and strongly ^expressed; what 

 they feel, they have never been taught either to disguise 'or 

 suppress, and having no habits of thinking which perpetually 

 recal the past, and anticipate the future, they are affected by 

 all the changes of the passing hour, and reflect the color of 

 the time, however frequently it may vary ; they have no 

 project which is to be pursued from day to day, the subject 

 of unremitted anxiety and solicitude, that first rushes into 

 the mind when they awake in the morning, and is last dis- 

 missed when they sleep at night. Yet if we admit that they 

 are upon the whole happier than we, we must admit that the 

 child is happier than the man, and that we are losers by the 



* Arctic Expedition, vol. ii., p, 23. f Cook's First Voyage, p. 103. 



J D'Urville, vol. ii., p. 398. See also Burton's Lake Regions of Central 

 Africa, p. 332. 



