220 TO LAKE NAIYASHA 
Camp at Lake Naivasha 
From a photograph by Edmund Heller 
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. 35 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 accompani¬ 
ments of life. If Matthew Arnold, when he expressed the 
wish to know the thoughts of Earth's “vigorous, primitive 33 
tribes of the past, had really desired an answer to his ques¬ 
tion, he would have done well to visit the homes of the ex¬ 
isting representatives of his “vigorous, primitive 33 ances¬ 
tors, and to watch them feasting on blood and guts; while 
as for the “pellucid and pure 33 feelings of his imaginary 
primitive maiden, they were those of any meek, cowlike 
