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

BLACK MAN = BLACK MANNERS 439
in a committee-room or baptized on a platform. Watch
him, this apostle of the Nimrod cult. A veteran of life's
battles with a war-worn face, there he stands in his plain
loin-cloth, the very plainness of the old hunter being a
plainer rebuke to the young generation of over-dressed
Christians. He adorns the doctrine, and they are too
apt to adorn themselves. A mighty hunter before the
Lord.
As we have already seen, of course one swallow does
not make a summer in Africa. But (if one dare execute
such a straddle on cross metaphors) here is a straw that
indicates the current among the cannibals. I refer to a
curiously foreign feature of life in here, a great tribal
meeting on sanitation summoned by the deep-voiced
Nkumji, or sycamore-drum, the Chief taking his seat by
my side and seconding everything. Being thirsty, I
proposed to indulge my baser nature with a cup of water,
but found it filthy with contamination. If "Afric's
sunny fountains " would only roll down water instead of
sand at times, it would be a decided improvement.
" Golden sands " sounds poetic, but in Africa we must
get all our poetry out of the plain prose of life, and this
trek I have drunk red water and black water, yellow
water and white water, but worst of all was this green
stujff to-day. Ah yes! I believe in "holy water"
provided it is of the right kind. Pushing investigations,
we soon find out that here is a vast tribe living on a
dunghill of disease, the whole insanitary condition of
the place a clear case of ten thousand dirty men shaking