146 
African Game Trails 
usual African (whether Mohammedan or 
heathen) type, there were certain excellent 
governmental customs, of binding obser¬ 
vance, which in the aggregate might almost 
be called an unwritten constitution. Alone 
among the natives of tropical Africa the 
people of Uganda have proved very acces¬ 
sible to Christian teaching, so that the creed 
of Christianity is now dominant among 
them. For their good fortune, England 
man’s country, and the prime need is to 
build up a large, healthy population of true 
white settlers, white home makers, who 
shall take the land as an inheritance for 
their children’s children. Uganda can 
never be this kind of white man’s country; 
and although planters and merchants of 
the right type can undoubtedly do well 
there—to the advantage of the country as 
well as of themselves—it must remain es- 
has established a protectorate over them. 
Most wisely the English Government offi¬ 
cials, and as a rule the missionaries, have 
bent their energies to developing them 
along their own lines, in government, dress, 
and ways of life; constantly striving to bet¬ 
ter them and bring them forward, but not 
twisting them aside from their natural line 
of development, nor wrenching them loose 
from what was good in their past, by at¬ 
tempting the impossible task of turning an 
entire native population into black English¬ 
men at one stroke. 
The problem set to the governing caste 
in Uganda is totally different from that 
which offers itself in British East Africa. 
The highlands of East Africa form a white 
sentially a black man’s country, and the 
chief task of the officials of the intrusive 
and masterful race must be to bring for-, 
ward the natives, to train them, and above 
all to help them train themselves, so that 
they may advance in industry, in learning, 
in morality, in capacity for self-government 
—for it is idle to talk of “giving” a peo¬ 
ple self-government; the gift of the forms, 
when the inward spirit is lacking, is mere 
folly; all that can be done is patiently to 
help a people acquire the necessary quali¬ 
ties—social, moral, intellectual, industrial, 
and lastly political—and meanwhile to ex¬ 
ercise for their benefit, with justice, sym¬ 
pathy, and firmness, the governing ability 
which' as yet they themselves lack. The 
