CONTENTS
| PAGE | ||
| [I.] | THE ARGUMENT | [7] |
| [II.] | WHERE IGNORANCE WAS BLISS | [16] |
| [III.] | LITERÆ INHUMANIORES | [36] |
| [IV.] | THE DISCOVERY | [50] |
| [V.] | CANNIBAL’S CONSCIENCE | [67] |
| [VI.] | GLIMPSES OF CIVILIZATION | [73] |
| [VII.] | THE POET-PIONEER | [90] |
| [VIII.] | VOICES CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS | [101] |
| [IX.] | A LEAGUE OF HUMANENESS | [121] |
| [X.] | TWENTIETH-CENTURY TORTURES | [135] |
| [XI.] | HUNNISH SPORTS AND FASHIONS | [151] |
| [XII.] | A FADDIST’S DIVERSIONS | [169] |
| [XIII.] | HOOF-MARKS OF THE VANDAL | [185] |
| [XIV.] | THE FORLORN HOPE | [200] |
| [XV.] | THE CAVE-MAN RE-EMERGES | [219] |
| [XVI.] | POETRY OF DEATH AND LOVE | [231] |
| [XVII.] | THE TALISMAN | [239] |
| [INDEX]: [A], [B], [C], [D], [E], [F], [G], [H], [I], [J], [K], [L], [M], [N], [O], [P], [R], [S], [T], [V], [W], [Z] | [249] |
Seventy Years Among
Savages
I
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 myself—quite as real as any of those related by the most venturesome of voyagers.
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 life was so cast, for during the first part of my residence in the strange land where I was born, the dreadful reality of my surroundings was hardly suspected by me, except now and then, perhaps, in a passing glimmer 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.