Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

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THINKING BLACK
save the boot, for you only escape a cut at the expense of
cutting your own precious foot-wear. Now it is that this
leather covering appears to the barefoot native both a
marvel and a portent, for instead of thinking that the
boot merely covers the foot that wears it, his idea is that
those few inches of shoe carpet the whole forest with
leather. A good lesson this, that even in the smallest
boons of life there is nothing like the widest point of
view, mere inches multiplied to miles. Literally only so
many inches, but actually they cause the whole earth
you walk on to be covered with leather, so it all depends
on how you look on a little thing. This tale of jags,
however, is only one per cent of the story, for the re-
maining ninety-nine of your caravan boasts, not boots,
but that delicate pneumatic tyre—a bare black foot.
Hence all these doublings and twistings of the negro
trail, for your naked companion must go gingerly along
this never-trodden ground, every wobble being out of
deep reverence to some hidden shag or jag in the dense
growth. For in order to avoid a pneumatic puncture,
he must feel his way along, as against the white man
with his leather "clogs" (sic) who can cut across country
crunching down all oppositions. Then after the shag
comes the stupid young ant-hill demanding another
wriggle from the traveller, but this is minor compared
with the long detour round a fallen tree : is it not easier
to dodge than dislodge it ? This means a twist twenty
feet round the end, and long years after this tree has
been burned out of existence the pawky path still per-