It stood in the very heart of the jungle.
And it was almost hidden by the wooden pillars of a pagan temple.
Our ancestors, in search of easy plunder, had come in contact with what they were pleased to call “wild men” or “savages.”
The meeting had not been a pleasant one.
The poor heathen, misunderstanding the intentions of the white men, had welcomed them with a salvo of spears and arrows.
The visitors had retaliated with their blunderbusses.
After that there had been little chance for a quiet and unprejudiced exchange of ideas.
The savage was invariably depicted as a dirty, lazy, good-for-nothing loafer who worshiped crocodiles and dead trees and deserved all that was coming to him.
Then came the reaction of the eighteenth century. Jean Jacques Rousseau began to contemplate the world through a haze of sentimental tears. His contemporaries, much impressed by his ideas, pulled out their handkerchiefs and joined in the weeping.