General Remarks.--A frank, joking, but determined manner, joined with an
air of showing more confidence in the good faith of the natives than you
really feel, is the best. It is observed, that a sea-captain generally
succeeds in making an excellent impression on savages: they thoroughly
appreciate common sense, truth, and uprightness; and are not half such
fools as strangers usually account them. If a savage does mischief, look
on him as you would on a kicking mule, or a wild animal, whose nature is
to be unruly and vicious, and keep your temper quite unruffled. Evade the
mischief, if you can: if you cannot, endure it; and do not trouble
yourself overmuch about your dignity, or about retaliating on the man,
except it be on the grounds of expediency. There are even times when any
assumption of dignity becomes ludicrous, and the traveller must, as Mungo
Park had once to do, "lay it down as a rule to make himself as useless
and as insignificant as possible, as the only means of recovering his
liberty."
Bush Law.--It is impossible but that a traveller must often take the law
into his own hands. Some countries, no doubt, are governed with a strong
arm by a savage despot; to whom or to whose subordinates appeals must of
course be made; but, for the most part, the system of life among savages
is--
"The simple rule, the good old plan--
That they should take, who have the power;
And they should keep, who can."
Where there is no civil law, or any kind of substitute for it, each man
is, as it were, a nation in himself; and then the traveller ought to be
guided in his actions by the motives that influence nations, whether to
make war or to abstain from it, rather than by the criminal code of
civilised countries. The traveller must settle in his own mind what his
scale of punishments should be; and it will be found a convenient
principle that a culprit should be punished in proportion to the quantity
of harm that he has done, rather than according to the presumed
wickedness of the offence. Thus, if two men were caught, one of whom had
stolen an ox, and the other a sheep, it would be best to flog the first
much more heavily than the second; it is a measure of punishment more
intelligible to savages than ours. The principle of double or treble
restitution, to which they are well used, is of the same nature. If all
theft be punished, your administration will be a reign of terror; for
every savage, even your best friends, will pilfer little things from you,
whenever they have a good opportunity. Be very severe if any of your own
party steal trifles from natives: order double or treble restitution, if
the man does not know better; and, if he does, a flogging besides, and
not in place of it.
Seizing Food.--On arriving at an encampment, the natives commonly run
away in fright. If you are hungry, or in serious need of anything that
they have, go boldly into their huts, take just what you want, and leave
fully adequate payment. It is absurd to be over-scrupulous in these
cases.
Feast-Days.--Interrupt the monotony of travel, by marked days, on which
you give extra tobacco and sugar to the servants. Avoid constant good
feeding, but rather have frequent slight fasts to ensure occasional good
feasts; and let those occasions when marked stages of your journey have
been reached, be great gala-days. Recollect that a savage cannot endure
the steady labour that we Anglo-Saxons have been bred to support. His
nature is adapted to alternations of laziness and of severe exertion.
Promote merriment, singing, fiddling, and so forth, with all your power.
Autolycus says, in 'A Winter's Tale'--
"Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way,
Merrily bent the stils-a:
A merry heart goes all the day,
Your sad tires in a mile-a."
Flogging.--Different tribes have very different customs in the matter of
corporal punishment: there are some who fancy it a disgrace and a serious
insult. A young traveller must therefore be discriminating and cautious
in the licence he allows to his stick, or he may fall into sad trouble.
Kindliness of Women--Wherever you go, you will find kindheartedness
amongst women. Mungo Park is fond of recording his experiences of this;
but I must add that he seems to have been an especial favourite with the
sex. The gentler of the two sexes is a "teterrima causa belli."
When you wish a Savage to keep count, give him a string of beads. The
boxes and parcels that are sent by the overland route are, or were,
counted in this way by an Arab overseer. He was described as having a
cord with great beads strung on it, and the end of the cord was thrown
over his shoulder. As each box passed him, he jerked a bead from the fore
part of the cord to the back part of it, over his shoulder.
Drawing Lots.--It is often necessary to distribute things by lot. Do it
by what children call "soldiering:" One stands with his back to the rest'
another, pointing to the portions in succession, calls out "Who is to
have this?" To which the first one replies by naming somebody, who at
once takes possession.