white man's adjudication; in case of illness the
man's medicine; in case of trouble the white man's sustaining hand. Yet
he almost never attempts to copy the white man's appearance or ways of
doing things. His own savage customs and habits he fulfils with as much
pride as ever in their eternal fitness. Once I was badgering Memba Sasa,
asking him whether he thought the white skin or the black skin the more
ornamental. "You are not white," he retorted at last. "That," pointing
to a leaf of my notebook, "is white. You are red. I do not like the
looks of red people."

They call our speech the "snake language," because of its hissing sound.
Once this is brought to your attention, indeed, you cannot help noticing
the superabundance of the sibilants.

A queer melange the pigeonholes of an African's brain must contain-fear
and respect, strongly mingled with clear estimate of intrinsic character
of individuals and a satisfaction with his own standards.

Nor, I think, do we realize sufficiently the actual fundamental
differences between the African and our peoples. Physically they must
be in many ways as different from our selves as though they actually
belonged to a different species. The Masai are a fine big race,
enduring, well developed and efficient. They live exclusively on cow's
milk mixed with blood; no meat, no fruit, no vegetables, no grain;
just that and nothing more. Obviously they must differ from us most
radically, or else all our dietetic theories are wrong. It is a
well-known fact that any native requires a triple dose of white man's
medicine. Furthermore a native's sensitiveness to pain is very much
less than the white man's. This is indubitable. For example, the Wakamba
file-or, rather, chip, by means of a small chisel-all their front
teeth down to needle points, When these happen to fall out, the warrior
substitutes an artificial tooth which he drives down into the socket.
If the savage got the same effects from such a performance that a white
man's dental system would arouse, even "savage stoicism" would hardly
do him much good. There is nothing to be gained by multiplying examples.
Every African traveller can recall a thousand.

Incidentally, and by the way, I want to add to the milk-and-blood joke
on dietetics another on the physical culturists. We are all familiar
with the wails over the loss of our toe nails. You know what I mean;
they run somewhat like this: shoes are the curse of civilization; if
we