But common-sense tells me not to take into undue consideration their squalor, their ugliness, or nakedness, but to gauge their true position among the human race by taking a view of the cultivated fields and gardens of Uhombo, and I am compelled to admit that these debased specimens of humanity only plant and sow such vegetables and grain as I myself should cultivate were I compelled to provide for my own sustenance. I see, too, that their huts, though of grass, are almost as well made as the materials will permit, and indeed I have often slept in worse. Speak with them in their own dialect of the law of _meum_ and _tuum_, and it will soon appear that they are intelligent enough upon that point. Moreover, the muscles, tissues, and fibres of their bodies, and all the organs of sight, hearing, smell, or motion, are as well developed as in us. Only in taste and judgment, based upon larger experience, in the power of expression, in morals and intellectual culture, are we superior. I strive, therefore, to interest myself in my gross and rudely-shaped brothers and sisters. Almost bursting into a laugh at the absurdity, I turn towards an individual whose age marks him out as one to whom respect is due, and say to him after the common manner of greeting: “My brother, sit you down by me on this mat, and let us be friendly and sociable”; and as I say it I thrust into his wide open hand twenty cowries, the currency of the land. One look at his hand as he extended it made me think I could carve a better-looking hand out of a piece of rhinoceros hide. While speaking I look at his face, which is like an ugly and extravagant mask, clumsily manufactured from some strange, dark brown coarse material. The lips proved the thickness of skin which nature had endowed him with, and by the obstinacy with which they refused to meet each other the form of the mouth was but ill-defined, though capacious and garnished with its full complement of well-preserved teeth. His nose was so flat that I inquired in a perfectly innocent manner as to the reason for such a feature. “Ah,” said he, with a sly laugh, “it is the fault of my mother, who, when I was young, bound me too tight to her back.” His hair had been compelled to obey the capricious fashion of his country, and was therefore worked up into furrows and ridges and central cones, bearing a curious resemblance to the formation of the land around Uhombo. I wonder if the art grew by perceiving nature’s fashion and mould of his country? Descending from the face, which, crude, large-featured, rough-hewn as it was, bore witness to the possession of much sly humour and a kindly disposition, my eyes fastened on his naked body. Through the ochreous daubs I detected strange freaks of pricking on it, circles and squares and crosses, and traced with wonder the many hard lines and puckers created by age, weather, ill-usage, and rude keeping.