TO LAKE NAIVASHA 
201 
running from the foe that has seized one of its number, and 
a buck will cover a doe in the brief interval between the 
first and the second alarm, from hunter or lion. Zebra 
will make much noise when one of their number has been 
killed; but their fright has vanished when once they be¬ 
gin their barking calls. 
Death by violence, death by cold, death by starvation— 
these are the normal endings of the stately and beautiful 
creatures of the wilderness. The sentimentalists who prattle 
about the peaceful life of nature do not realize its utter 
mercilessness; although all they would have to do would 
be to look at the birds in the winter woods, or even at the 
insects on a cold morning or cold evening. Life is hard 
and cruel for all the lower creatures, and for man also 
in what the sentimentalists call a state of nature.” The 
savage of to-day shows us what the fancied age of gold of 
our ancestors was really like; it was an age when hunger, 
cold, violence, and iron cruelty were the ordinary accom¬ 
paniments of life. If Matthew Arnold, when he expressed 
the wish to know the thoughts of Earth’s ‘"vigorous, primi¬ 
tive” tribes of the past, had really desired an answer to his 
question, he would have done well to visit the homes of the 
existing representatives of his “vigorous, primitive” ances¬ 
tors, and to watch them feasting on blood and guts; while 
as for the “pellucid and pure” feelings of his imaginary 
primitive maiden, they were those of any meek, cowlike 
creature who accepted marriage by purchase or of con¬ 
venience, as a matter of course. 
It was to me a perpetual source of wonderment to 
notice the difference in the behavior of different individuals 
of the same species, and in the behavior of the same in- 
