SEVENTY YEARS AMONG SAVAGES SEVENTY YEARS AMONG SAVAGES BY HENRY S. SALT [Illustration: colophon] LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. 1 _First published in 1921_ (_All rights reserved._) 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 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.