Within shot of the game, they saw something and bolted.
Knowing he and the boy behind him had been making no sound and could
not have been seen, he stalked on, but always with the same result;
until happening to look round, he saw the boy behind him was
supporting the dignity of the Empire at large, and this
representative of it in particular, by steadfastly holding aloft the
consular flag. Well, if you go hunting the African idea with the
flag of your own religion or opinions floating ostentatiously over
you, you will similarly get a very poor bag.
A few hints as to your mental outfit when starting on this sport may
be useful. Before starting for West Africa, burn all your notions
about sun-myths and worship of the elemental forces. My own opinion
is you had better also burn the notion, although it is fashionable,
that human beings got their first notion of the origin of the soul
from dreams.
I went out with my mind full of the deductions of every book on
Ethnology, German or English, that I had read during fifteen years -
and being a good Cambridge person, I was particularly confident that
from Mr. Frazer's book, The Golden Bough, I had got a semi-universal
key to the underlying idea of native custom and belief.
