African Game Trails 
517 
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 begin 
their barking calls 
Death by violence, death by cold, death 
by starvation—these are the normal end- 
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 or¬ 
dinary accompaniments of life. If Matthew 
Arnold, when he expressed the wish to know 
the thoughts of Earth’s “vigorous, primi- 
Xhe waterhole 
struck after having made a dry camp on our trek to Lake Naivasha. 
From a photograph by Kermit Roosevelt. 
ings 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 even¬ 
ing. Life is hard and cruel for all the 
lower creatures, and for man also in what 
the sentimentalists call a “state of nature.” 
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 repre¬ 
sentatives 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 convenience, as a matter of course. 
