IT IS BAD TO DIE. 



331 



and slapping with a will, and a pair thus engaged 

 require to be torn asunder by half a dozen friends. 

 The settled tribes are, for the most part, feeble and 

 unwarlike barbarians ; even the bravest East African, 

 though, like all men, a combative entity, has a valour 

 tempered by discretion and cooled by a high develop- 

 ment of cautiousness. His tactics are of the Fabian 

 order : he loves surprises and safe ambuscades ; and in 

 common frays and forays the loss of one per cent, 

 justifies a sauve qui pent. This people, childlike, is 

 ever in extremes. A man will hang himself from a 

 rafter in his tent, and kick away from under him the 

 large wooden mortar upon which he has stood at the 

 beginning of the operation with as much sang-froid as an 

 Anglo-Saxon in the gloomy month of November ; yet 

 he regards annihilation, as all savages do, with loathing 

 and ineffable horror. " He fears death," to quote 

 Bacon, " as children fear to go in the dark ; and as that 

 natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the 

 other." The African mind must change radically before 

 it can " think upon death, and find it the least of all evils." 

 All the thoughts of these negroids are connected with 

 this life. "Ah!" they exclaim, "it is bad to die! to 

 leave off eating and drinking! never to wear a fine 

 cloth!" As in the negro race generally, their destruc- 

 tiveness is prominent ; a slave never breaks a thing 

 without an instinctive laugh of pleasure ; and however 

 careful he may be of his own life, he does not value 

 that of another, even of a relative, at the price of a goat. 

 During fires in the town of Zanzibar, the blacks have 

 been seen adding fuel, and singing and dancing, wild 

 with delight. On such occasions they are shot down by 

 the Arabs like dogs. 



It is difficult to explain the state of society in which 



