which no person here
can understand a single word, and which are, very likely, all about
fighting with his enemies in battle, and killing them, and, I am sorry
to say, cooking them in a ground-oven, and eating them for supper when
the fight is over.

For Arick is really what you call a savage, though a savage is a very
different sort of a person, and very much nicer than he is made to
appear in little books. He is the kind of person that everybody smiles
to, or makes faces at, or gives a smack as he goes by; the sort of
person that all the girls on the plantation give the best seat to and
help first, and love to decorate with flowers and ribbons, and yet all
the while are laughing at him; the sort of person who likes best to play
with Austin, and whom Austin, perhaps (when he is allowed), likes best
to play with. He is all grins and giggles and little steps out of
dances, and little droll ways to attract people's attention and set them
laughing. And yet, when you come to look at him closely, you will find
that his body is all covered with _scars_! This happened when he was a
child. There was war, as is the way in these wild islands, between his
village and the next, much as if there were war in London between one
street and another; and all the children ran about playing in the middle
of the trouble, and, I dare say, took no more notice of the war than you
children in London do of a general election. But sometimes, at general
elections, English children may get run over by processions in the
street; and it chanced that as little Arick was running about in the
Bush, and very busy about his playing, he ran into the midst of the
warriors on the other side. These speared him with a poisoned spear; and
his own people, when they had found him, in order to cure him of the
poison scored him with knives that were probably made of fish-bone.

This is a very savage piece of child-life; and Arick, for all his good
nature, is still a very savage person. I have told you how the Black
Boys sometimes run away from the plantations, and live alone in the
forest, building little sheds to protect them from the rain, and
sometimes planting little gardens for food; but for the most part living
the best they can upon the nuts of the trees and the yams that they dig
with their hands out of the earth. I do not think there can be anywhere
in the world people more wretched than these runaways. They cannot
return, for they would only return to be