I had observed that in these farewells this simple-hearted people made little outward sign of the depth of their emotions. Only the magnetic look out of the eyes would have told a stranger what benignity lay underneath. Nor was it merely to show how sympathetic they were that they thus accompanied their foreign couriers to the outskirts of the island. It was chiefly to give them each his contribution of magnetism, to lessen their burden on their far journey, to make them feel how much the spirit of the community went with them. Not one of them would ever allow himself to indulge in so idle an evidence of emotion as tears. There was in this people a vein of stoicism, I thought; they seemed to repress all mere symbols of feeling. A European would have called their farewells dull and emotionless, if not stony-hearted. There was no kissing or embracing; there was not even the shaking of hands or bowing of heads. Without physical contact their spirits could work upon each other with a power that in other civilisations would have been called witchcraft. Through their firlas, through their eyes, rayed forth a keen soul-stirring magnetism. And each assisted the other in preventing the approach of the old wasteful manifestations of sorrow or despondency. Lamentation was a thing of the far, almost prehistoric, past; a sob or sigh or even complaint they knew too well from their physiological knowledge to be mere emotional extravagance, a waste of the energy or the tissue, all of which was needed for the strenuous endeavour towards a higher plane. So it was that they seemed to me stoical in positions where the men and women I had known in my youth would burst into weeping and wailing, or cries and gestures of affection.