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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
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