558 
DISLIKE TO RAIN. — WANT OF TRUE COURAGE. 
They are exceedingly careful to avoid exposing themselves to 
the rain; as wet injures the leather of their cloaks, and occasions 
them much additional trouble in rubbing it continually to prevent its 
becoming hard in drying. However desirous and anxious they may 
be for showers during the time while their corn is growing, they 
seemed to have a strong natural dislike to be themselves wetted by a 
shower : the sensation of rain beating on the skin, is said to be dis- 
agreeable, and this, added to the consideration that every part of 
their clothing is of leather, may be sufficient to explain the haste with 
which at such times they run to shelter, and the reluctance with which 
they quit it, excepting in dry weather. Some portion of this dislike 
may be attributable to constitutional feeling, which, in a country 
where the ordinary state of the atmosphere is excessive aridity, must 
be very different from that of the inhabitants of England, where it 
is exactly the reverse. 
Considered generally, they are a timid race of men ; but to 
remedy this defect, they adopt stratagem ; yet no experience or know- 
ledge of my own would justify me in giving them the character of 
being treacherous as a nation : I have not, however, equal hesitation 
in giving them that of gaining their private ends, by cunning and 
bad-faith. True courage, one may be inclined to believe, is but 
thinly sprinkled over this land ; and the whole tribe would probably 
fly with precipitation, before a handful of brave and resolute men : 
or, if they ventured to attack these, it would only be by night, or 
from an ambuscade. 
However defective or perverted their judgment may be on many 
subjects, they are to be admired for the candour with which they 
freely own that white-men are greatly their superiors, not only in 
arts and customs, but even in mental capacity : and we must confess 
that in this acknowledgment they are greatly our superiors in good- 
sense, and deserve in this particular point, to be respected and 
imitated by those European nations whose arrogance or blindness 
makes them imagine that the inhabitants of no other country are equal 
to themselves. Such Europeans who despise the humble example 
of these Africans, may yet be taught one lesson of humility ; 
