This completeness, however, will be a sad drawback to development. Already it is found difficult to create new wants; and when labor is required, and you have already paid your man a yard of calico and a string of beads, you have nothing in your possession to bribe him to another hand's turn. Nothing almost that you have would be the slightest use to him. Among the presents which I took for chiefs, I was innocent enough to include a watch. I might as well have taken a grand piano. For months I never looked at my own watch in that land of sunshine. Besides, the mere idea of time has scarcely yet penetrated the African mind, and forms no element whatever in his calculations. I wanted on one occasion to catch the little steamer on the Shiré, and pleaded this as an excuse to a rather powerful chief, whom it would have been dangerous to quarrel with, and who would not let me leave his village. The man merely stared. The idea of any one being in a hurry was not only preposterous but inconceivable, and I might as well have urged as my reason for wishing away that the angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. This difference in ideas is the real obstacle to African travelling, and it raises all sorts of problems in one's mind as to the nature of ideas themselves. I often wished I could get inside an African for an afternoon, and just see how he looked at things; for I am sure our worlds are as different as the color of our skins. Talking of skins, I may observe in passing that the highland African is not a negro, nor is his skin black. It is a deep full-toned brown, something like the color of a good cigar. The whole surface is diced with a delicate pattern, which gives it great richness and beauty, and I often thought how effective a row of books would be bound in native-morocco.