Such Are The Pursuits, Sports And Pastimes Of My Friends The Fans.
I Have Been Considerably Chaffed Both By Whites
And blacks about my
partiality for this tribe, but as I like Africans in my way - not a
la Sierra
Leone - and these Africans have more of the qualities I
like than any other tribe I have met, it is but natural that I
should prefer them. They are brave and so you can respect them,
which is an essential element in a friendly feeling. They are on
the whole a fine race, particularly those in the mountain districts
of the Sierra del Cristal, where one continually sees magnificent
specimens of human beings, both male and female. Their colour is
light bronze, many of the men have beards, and albinoes are rare
among them. The average height in the mountain districts is five
feet six to five feet eight, the difference in stature between men
and women not being great. Their countenances are very bright and
expressive, and if once you have been among them, you can never
mistake a Fan. But it is in their mental characteristics that their
difference from the lethargic, dying-out coast tribes is most
marked. The Fan is full of fire, temper, intelligence and go; very
teachable, rather difficult to manage, quick to take offence, and
utterly indifferent to human life. I ought to say that other
people, who should know him better than I, say he is a treacherous,
thievish, murderous cannibal. I never found him treacherous; but
then I never trusted him, remembering one of the aphorisms of my
great teacher Captain Boler of Bonny, "It's not safe to go among
bush tribes, but if you are such a fool as to go, you needn't go and
be a bigger fool still, you've done enough." And Captain Boler's
other great aphorism was: "Never be afraid of a black man." "What
if I can't help it?" said I. "Don't show it," said he. To these
precepts I humbly add another: "Never lose your head." My most
favourite form of literature, I may remark, is accounts of
mountaineering exploits, though I have never seen a glacier or a
permanent snow mountain in my life. I do not care a row of pins how
badly they may be written, and what form of bumble-puppy grammar and
composition is employed, as long as the writer will walk along the
edge of a precipice with a sheer fall of thousands of feet on one
side and a sheer wall on the other; or better still crawl up an
arete with a precipice on either. Nothing on earth would persuade
me to do either of these things myself, but they remind me of bits
of country I have been through where you walk along a narrow line of
security with gulfs of murder looming on each side, and where in
exactly the same way you are as safe as if you were in your easy
chair at home, as long as you get sufficient holding ground:
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 184 of 371
Words from 96405 to 96913
of 194943
