Salt - Seventy years among savages

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Seventy Years Among Savages

THE ARGUMENT

A strange lot this, to be dropped down in a world of barbarians Men who see clearly enough the barbarity of all ages except their own ! Ernest Crosby.

The tales of travellers, from Herodotus to Marco Polo, and from Marco Polo to the modern " globe-trotter," have in all ages been subject, justly or unjustly, to a good deal of suspicion, on the ground that those who go in quest of curious information among outlandish tribes are likely in the first instance to be imposed on themselves, and in the sequel to impose on their readers. No such doubt, however, can attach to the following record, for I am myself a native of the land whose customs are described by me. I cannot think that my story, true as it is, and admitting of corroboration by the similar witness of others, is any the less adventurous on that account; for, like previous writers who have recorded certain startling discoveries, I, too, have to speak of solitudes and remotenesses, vast deserts and rare oases, inextricable forests and dividing gulfs ; and such experiences are none the less noteworthy because they are not of the body but of the mind. At any rate, the tale which I have to tell deals with incidents which have had a very real significance for myselfquite as real as any of those related by the most venturesome of voyagers.

S SEVENTY YEARS AMONG SAVAGES

The seventy years spent by me among savages form the subject of this story, but not, be it noted, seventy years of consciousness that my hfe was so cast, for during the first part of my residence in the strange land where 1 was born, the dreadful reality of my surroundings was hardly suspected by me, except now and then, perhaps, in a passing ghmmer of apprehension. Then, by slow degrees, incident after incident brought a gradual awakening, until at last there dawned on my mind the conviction which alone could explain and reconcile for me the many contradictions of our society that we were not " civilized " but " savages "that the "dark ages," far from being part of a remote past, were very literally present.

And here, in explanation of my long blindness to an unwelcome truth, it must be remarked that there is a fi.xed and almost insuperable superstition among my savage fellow-islandersand, indeed, among all the surrounding nationsthat they are a cultured and highly civiHzed race, living in an age which has wholly emerged from the barbarism of their forefathers, the " good old times " to which some of them even affect to look back with feeHngs of pious regretfulness. It was this delusion, to which I was at first fully subject, that made it so difficult for me to see things in their true light, and still makes it wellnigh impossible to communicate the truth to others, except to those whose suspicions have in like measure been aroused. In reahty, it will be seen, the difference between the earlier " barbarism " and the later so-called " civiH-zation " is, in the main, a mere matter of the absence or presence of certain intellectual refinements and mechanical sciences, which, while largely altering and complicating the outward conditions of Hfe, leave its essentially savage spirit almost entirely untouched.

It was not till I was over thirty years of age that I felt any serious concern as to the manners and customs with which I was famiUar, and which I had unquestion

ingly accepted from childhood as part of the natural order. I had heard and read of " savages," but felt the more satisfaction to know that I was a native of a land which had for centuries enjoyed the blessings of civilization and of reHgion, which it was anxious to disseminate as widely as possible throughout the earth. Why the diet of my countrymen should have been the first thing to set me pondering, I am unable to say, for as my later discoveries convinced me, the dietetic habits of these people are not more astonishing than many kindred practices which I still regarded without mistrust. But it was so ; and I then found myself realizing, with an amazement which time has not diminished, that the " meat " which formed the staple of our diet, and which I was accustomed to regard like bread, or fruit, or vegetablesas a mere commodity of the table, was in truth dead fleshthe actual flesh and bloodof oxen, sheep, swine, and other animals that were slaughtered in vast numbers under conditions so horrible that even to mention the subject at our dinner-tables would have been an unpardonable offence.

Now, when I began to put questions to my friends and acquaintances about this apparently glaring inconsistency in our " civilization," I could not help observing, novice though I was in such discussion, that the answers by which they sought to parry my awkward importunities were extremely evasive and sophistical reminding me of the quibbling explanations which travellers have received from cannibals when they inquired too closely into certain dietetic observances ; and from this I could not but suspect that, as far as diet was concerned, we differed in degree only from the savages whom we deemed so debased.

It must be understood, however, that here, and in other references to " savages," I use that term in its natural and inoffensive meaning, as implying simply a lack of the higher civihzation and not any personal cruelty or bloodthirstiness. What I write is just a

10 SEVENTY YEARS AMONG SAVAGES

friendly account of friendly savages (by one of them) ; and I would emphasize the fact that the kindhness and good nature of my fellow-countrymen are in one direction quite as marked features of their character as their savagery is in another. In their own famihes, to their own kith and kin, to their personal friends to all those whom fortune has placed within, instead of without the charmed circle of relationshiptheir conduct, in the great majority of cases, is exemplary ; it is only where custom or prejudice has dug a gulf of division between their fellow-creatures and themselves that they indulge in the barbarous practices to which I refer.

It may be convenient if I here speak briefly of their other customs under two heads : first, those that relate to human beings ; and, secondly, those that relate to the so-called lower animals. In few ways, perhaps, is the barbarism of these islanders more apparent than in their wars and in their preparation for wars. For what they call " peace " is, in fact, only an armed trucean interval between two outbreaks of hostility during which, so far from being at genuine peace with their neighbours, they are occupied in speculating where the next attack shall be delivered, or, rather (for they love to depict themselves as always standing on pious self-defence against the wanton aggressiveness of others), how they shall repel the next attack from abroad. It is their custom always to have, for the time being, some bugbear among neighbouring tribes, whose supposed machinations against the richer portions of their empire give them constant cause for unrest, and prompt them to cement undying, but equally transitory, alliances with other nations, so that their very friendships are based less on the spirit of amity than on that of distrust. Under pretence of believing in an unbehevable and, indeed, wholly ridiculous maxim Si vis paccm, para helium (" If you wish for peace, prepare for war ")they keep their minds for ever set on wars and rumours of wars, with the result