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 wear them much longer we shall not only lose
the intended use of our feet, but we shall lose our toe nails as
well; the savage man, etc. , etc. , etc. Now I saw a great many of
said savage men in Africa, and I got much interested in their toe
nails, because I soon found that our own civilized "imprisoned"
toe nails were very much better developed. In fact, a large
number of the free and untramelled savages have hardly any toe
nails at all!
