ims are known by them it stands to reason that this honesty
which speaks in their looks, words and acts depends upon their natural
sweet temper and their way of living.

The real Sakai recoils from everything approaching violence and never
assaults a fellow creature unless he believes himself or his family
seriously menaced or badly treated.

[Illustration: A young man procuring food with his blowpipe.

_p._ 169.]

Paolo Mantegazza has written that the nature of a weapon indicates not
only the technical ability of a race but also its degree of ferocity.
All those arms which serve to make suffer instead of to kill are certain
signs of cruelty.

Well, the Sakai inflicts no suffering upon his foe. The terrible poisons
with which he tinges his fatal arrows cause almost immediate death, and
his sole motive for killing is to rid himself of one whom he thinks will
do him harm, but should his enemy run away before he can hit him he
would neither follow nor lay an ambush for him. He might almost take as
his motto the celebrated line by Niccolini:

Ripassi l'Alpi e tornera fratello.[14]

Even if their gentle, peaceable characters did not disincline them for a
deed of crime, if their indolence and lack of passionate feelings were
not safe-guards from evil-doing the entire absence of incentive power
prevents them from committing a guilty action. Why should they rob when
their neighbours' goods are also theirs? When everything is everybody's,
be it a rich supply of meat, fruit, grain, tobacco or accomodation in a
sheltered hut? And why should they kill anybody?

For pure malignity? Because there is no other reason to prompt such a
wickedness. They have no excuse for jealousy, even if they were capable
of entertaining it, for when two young people are fond of each other no
pressure is ever made upon them to suffocate their love or to fix their
affections upon another through ambition or some sort of hypocritical
respect for the usages of society. If the enamoured swain can manage his
blowpipe ably enough to procure animal food for his wife their amorous
desires are at once contented. And so is the custom among more mature
couples. Should it happen that a man no longer cares for his wife or a
woman for her husband (which seldom befalls) or should they have met
with somebody else that they like better, no demoralizing
love-intrigue, or guilty flirtation is the consequence; they simply
announce their change of feeling to th