288 EXISTING SETTLERS 



would tell me, and the basket of beans he was 

 preparing as I entered was destined to form the 

 only dish at his evening meal. He told me he 

 had no other ambition in life ; that he meant to 

 live and die in the wilds, and among the natives 

 of whom he was almost one. For him there was 

 no degradation in such a life ; long custom had 

 blunted his perception of such a feeling. He 

 possessed but little in the way of civilised clothing, 

 and very seldom had occasion to wear it. An old 

 Martini rifle enabled him occasionally to shoot 

 some beast, the meat of which he would sell to 

 a passing river steamer, when he would endeavour, 

 not always successfully, to obtain part of the price 

 paid in cartridges, and thus maintain his smaU stock 

 of ammunition. During the time I spent there, I 

 saw him perform practically every daily task which 

 the native sets himself, for he had no attendants, 

 not even a small boy. He would collect his own 

 firewood, cook his own food, na\'igate with skill 

 a small "dug-out" canoe, and on one occasion, 

 when he had accompanied me to find some meat 

 for my carriers, he shouldered a reedbuck weighing 

 70 or 80 lb., and carried it fully six miles without 

 displaying any fatigue. It was an unedifying sight 

 to see an Englishman so brutalised, but there can 

 be no doubt that it is a condition which must 

 follow so demoralising a step as complete sever- 

 ance from one's own kind. 



I know of another case, the beginning of which 

 was not wholly dissimilar from the foregoing one, 

 but here the individual, whose Scottish shrewdness 

 refused to be extinguished by the brain-petrifying 



