Strangers severely criticise the native for want of foresight. A critic says:—“He ought to cultivate a few more feet of ground, as a time of scarcity might come.” But it is the very foresight of the native that prevents him from taking such a step. It is his critic that lacks discrimination and not he. His critic applies to him calculations that may be presumed upon, under a civilised government. The native, on the contrary, is familiar with the real situation. I once asked a schoolboy, “Will you keep a cow when you become a man?” His reply was “As if I had three lives!” Nothing could better express the secret. If a man had food in a time of famine, when all the others had not, his position would not be an enviable one. Unless in the immediate neighbourhood of the Mission, few had goods laid up except chiefs, but if security were guaranteed, native avarice and ambition would take this direction. Natives see that they could make many improvements, but they count the cost. Bishop Steere says:—“There are no roads in this part of Africa, no carriages and no beasts of burden, only a narrow footpath, so overgrown sometimes that one wonders the men who pass along do not clear it, until one remembers that the very last thing an African wishes, is to have an easy road to his village. If he could persuade himself that the next comer was likely to turn back and think that there was no road, he would sleep much more securely.” We were once walking along a native path with a person just come into the country, and were amused to notice how his taste was offended by small branches that were lying on the path. He carefully laid them aside with his staff, under the belief that he was teaching the natives a lesson, and conferring on them a permanent benefit!