These Facts Are Brought Against Me When I
Disclaim Knowledge Of What They Wish Me To Tell Them.
"You must
know," say they; "you know everything:
You make the fine weather
for your men to shoot, and you know all about our birds and our
animals as well as we do; and you go alone into the forest and
are not afraid." Therefore every confession of ignorance on my
part is thought to be a blind, a mere excuse to avoid telling
them too much. My very writing materials and books are to them
weird things; and were I to choose to mystify them by a few
simple experiments with lens and magnet, miracles without end
would in a few years cluster about me; and future travellers,
penetrating to Wanumbai, world h hardly believe that a poor
English naturalist, who had resided a few months among them,
could have been the original of the supernatural being to whom so
many marvels were attributed.
Far some days I had noticed a good deal of excitement, and many
strangers came and went armed with spears and cutlasses, bows and
shields. I now found there was war near us - two neighbouring
villages having a quarrel about some matter of local politics
that I could not understand. They told me it was quite a common
thing, and that they are rarely without fighting somewhere near.
Individual quarrels are taken up by villages and tribes, and the
nonpayment of the stipulated price for a wife is one of the most
frequent causes of bitterness and bloodshed.
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