Good and
bad all die."
"Their bodies perish, but their spirits remain; the good in happiness,
the bad in misery. If you have no belief in a future state, WHY SHOULD A
MAN BE GOOD? Why should he not be bad, if he can prosper by wickedness?"
Commoro. - "Most people are bad; if they are strong they take from the
weak. The good people are all weak; they are good because they are not
strong enough to be bad."
Some corn had been taken out of a sack for the horses, and a few grains
lying scattered on the ground, I tried the beautiful metaphor of St.
Paul as an example of a future state. Making a small hole with my finger
in the ground, I placed a grain within it: "That," I said, "represents
you when you die." Covering it with earth, I continued, "That grain will
decay, but from it will rise the plant that will produce a reappearance
of the original form."
Commoro. - "Exactly so; that I understand. But the ORIGINAL grain does
NOT rise again; it rots like the dead man, and is ended; the fruit
produced is not the same grain that we buried, but the PRODUCTION of
that grain: so it is with man - I die, and decay, and am ended; but my
children grow up like the fruit of the grain. Some men have no children,
and some grains perish without fruit; then all are ended."
I was obliged to change the subject of conversation. In this wild naked
savage there was not even a superstition upon which to found a religious
feeling; there was a belief in matter; and to his understanding
everything was MATERIAL. It was extraordinary to find so much clearness
of perception combined with such complete obtuseness to anything ideal.
Giving up the religious argument as a failure, I resolved upon more
practical inquiries.
The Turks had only arrived in the Latooka country in the preceding year.
They had not introduced the cowrie shell; but I observed that every
helmet was ornamented with this species; it therefore occurred to me
that they must find their way into the country from Zanzibar.
In reply to my inquiries, Commoro pointed to the south, from which he
said they arrived in his country, but he had no idea from whence they
came. The direction was sufficient to prove that they must be sent from
the east coast, as Speke and Grant had followed the Zanzibar traders as
far as Karagwe, the 2 degrees S. lat.
Commoro could not possibly understand my object in visiting the Latooka
country; it was in vain that I attempted to explain the intention of my
journey. He said, "Suppose you get to the great lake; what will you do
with it? What will be the good of it? If you find that the large river
does flow from it, what then? What's the good of it?"
I could only assure him, that in England we had an intimate knowledge of
the whole world, except the interior of Africa, and that our object in
exploring was to benefit the hitherto unknown countries by instituting
legitimate trade, and introducing manufactures from England in exchange
for ivory and other productions. He replied that the Turks would never
trade fairly; that they were extremely bad people, and that they would
not purchase ivory in any other way than by bartering cattle, which they
stole from one tribe to sell to another.
Our conversation was suddenly terminated by one of my men running in to
the tent with the bad news that one of the camels had dropped down and
was dying. The report was too true. He was poisoned by a well-known
plant that he had been caught in the act of eating. In a few hours he
died. There is no more stupid animal than the camel. Nature has
implanted in most animals an instinctive knowledge of the plants
suitable for food, and they generally avoid those that are poisonous:
but the camel will eat indiscriminately anything that is green; and if
in a country where the plant exists that is well known by the Arabs as
the "camel poison," watchers must always accompany the animals while
grazing. The most fatal plant is a creeper, very succulent, and so
beautifully green that its dense foliage is most attractive to the
stupid victim. The stomach of the camel is very subject to inflammation,
which is rapidly fatal. I have frequently seen them, after several days
of sharp desert marching, arrive in good pasture, and die, within a few
hours, of inflammation caused by repletion. It is extraordinary how they
can exist upon the driest and apparently most innutritious food. When
other animals are starving, the camel manages to pick up a subsistence,
eating the ends of barren, leafless twigs, the dried sticks of certain
shrubs, and the tough dry paper-like substance of the dome palm, about
as succulent a breakfast as would be a green umbrella and a Times
newspaper. With intense greediness the camel, although a hermit in
simplicity of fare in hard times, feeds voraciously when in abundant
pasture, always seeking the greenest shrubs. The poison-bush becomes a
fatal bait.
The camel is by no means well understood in Europe. Far from being the
docile and patient animal generally described, it is quite the reverse,
and the males are frequently dangerous. They are exceedingly perverse;
and are, as before described, excessively stupid. For the great deserts
they are wonderfully adapted, and without them it would be impossible to
cross certain tracts of country for want of water.
Exaggerated accounts have been written respecting the length of time
that a camel can travel without drinking. The period that the animal can
subsist without suffering from thirst depends entirely upon the season
and the quality of food. Precisely as in Europe sheep require but little
water when fed upon turnips, so does the camel exist almost without
drinking during the rainy season when pastured upon succulent and dewy
herbage.
