74 
V. JANUARY TO JUNE, 1914 
that N’Kendju would not be put to death, but would 
only have to pay a fine. Joseph, however, assured me 
that no reliance could be placed on such statements, 
and I felt obliged to remain at the river side till they 
started, as they would otherwise, no doubt, have 
dragged N’Kendju into the canoe by force. 
My* wife was troubled that while the patient was 
breathing his last his brother showed no sign of grief, 
and was thinking only of the putting into force of the 
legal rights, and she expressed herself angrily about 
his want of feeling. But in that she was no doubt 
wronging him. He was only fulfilling a sacred duty 
in beginning at once to take care that the person who, 
from his point of view, was responsible for his brother’s 
death, did not escape the penalty due to him. For to 
a negro it is unthinkable that any such act should 
remain unatoned for, a point of view which is thoroughly 
Hegelian ! For him the legal side of an event is always 
the important one, and a large part of his time is spent 
in discussing legal cases.* The most hardened litigant 
in Europe is but a child compared to the negro, and 
yet it is not the mere love of litigation that is the latter’s 
motive ; it is an unspoilt sense of justice, such as is, 
on the whole, no longer felt by Europeans. I was 
getting ready one day to tap an old Pahouin who was 
* other race on a similar level of culture has developed as 
strict methods of legal procedure as has the negro. Many of his 
legal forms remind us strongly of those of mediaeval Europe.” 
{Prof. Boas in “ The Ethnical Record,’' March, 1904, p. 107.) 
“ Everywhere in Africa where the life of the people has not been 
disturbed by outside influences, the people are governed by law. 
There is law relating to property, to morality, to the protection of life, 
in fact, in many portions of Africa law is more strictly regarded than 
in many civilised countries.” (Booker Washington : ” The Story 
of the Negro,” Vol. I., p, 70.) 
