as it is generally
called, varies with the Natives as it does among the whites, and is no
keener in the individual Native than in the individual white man. All
the hunters and travellers I have met have confirmed the opinion I have
myself formed from personal experience that by training his ordinary
powers of observation and thereby developing his sense of locality and
direction the average European is able, after a comparatively short
time, to find his way in difficult country as well as the Natives, while
some European hunters who have dispensed with Native guides and trackers
have acquired the art of tracking game so well that they surpass even
the local Natives themselves. "Veld-craft" is simply a matter of
training the ordinary faculties of observation and memory for particular
purposes, and the Native shows no such superiority in this respect as
would naturally be expected from him if he were indeed better provided
with animal instincts than the more civilised white man.

The sexual instincts of the Natives seem in no wise different from those
of other people. The African male, like the European male, is generally
more amative than the female who is always more philoprogenitive than
the man. But the notion is common that the Native male is more bestial
when sexually excited than the white man in similar case, and this is
taken to account for the fact that he is so often found guilty of crimes
of violence against females of his own colour, and sometimes even
against European women.

It must be borne in mind that before the white man came the Natives,
like the peasants in many European countries not long ago, conducted
their courtship and love-making with a show of violence which seemed to
them right and proper. The idea, indeed, that any self-respecting Native
girl could yield herself to a lover without, at least, a semblance of
physical resistance, leading to her more or less forcible capture by the
man, would have seemed, and still seems, distinctly improper to the
majority of Native women in their raw state. But since the European code
was set up Native women have not been slow in making use of its
protection, and, as I have seen, have not infrequently abused that
protection by alleging rape or assault where their own action in
simulating flight and resistance served, as they well knew it would, to
stimulate passion and pursuit.

In considering crimes of violence against white women it must also be
remembered