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.
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