insulting their beliefs would find his undertaking not only fruitless
but also dangerous because he would be immediately considered an enemy
and the _Ala_ would not fail to incite vengeance upon him in the
troubled spirits of the tribe.

I think the method most promising in its results is that which I myself
have proved. I slipped in amidst them, living the life that they live
and respecting their opinions and superstitions, at the same time
seeking indirectly to cure them of their natural laziness.

The Sakais are nomadic for two reasons: first, because when they have
exhausted, by their prodigality, the edible treasures that the forest
soil produces for them without need of toil, in the tract of land within
reach of their settlement, they change their residence to a fresh
quarter where this uncultivated product is for a long time in
superabundance; secondly, because when somebody of their number dies
they believe that an evil spirit has entered their village and that to
free themselves from its malignant influence it is necessary to fly to
another part.

Well, more than once I have made a point of sleeping in a hut lately
visited by death to show them how absurd the idea is. At first they
stood afar, looking at the forsaken spot and believing that I, too, was
dead, but afterwards finding, to their immense wonder, that I was still
alive and well, they began to doubt their own superstition and to build
their huts a little more solid so that they might be of greater
durability.

Overthrown in a definite manner one of the motives of their wanderings
the other would cease to exist from the moment they were taught to work
the ground. With this scope in view, from time to time, I make a
distribution of padi or maize and am glad to see that little by little
the miserable plots once rudely sown with corn are now becoming ample
fields.

Like the old philosopher I found in the forest, the other Sakais have
never thought, or rather let themselves think, what a boon it would be
for them to grow the things they like best, around their huts, instead
of feeling obliged to get it from others, and they evidently shared his
dislike to torturing the earth with iron, for before my advent and
sojourn amongst them they simply burnt the pith of the trees and plants
they felled and into the bed formed by the ashes they cast
indiscriminately bulb and grain, covering up both with their feet or
with a piece of wood, and afterwards they t