246 WHERE LIVES PRIMITIVE MAN otherwise, a higher culture from some far-away intermixed blood showing itself in more refined countenances and pleasing expressions.

A feature, strange to our even, well-regulated habits and ideas, of Arab and negro alike, is the ease with which they will subsist and undergo considerable privation on a very small quantity of food, and yet, when an opportunity arises, will calmly sit down and eat incredible quantities at one meal. But it is a land of extremes ; in every condition of life the swing of the pendulum is long : the repletion and indigestion—if not worse which the white man would suffer from in like circumstances have no counterpart here, while he would endure exceeding discomfort and trial had he to subsist in the interim on a few handfuls of dhurra. But in Africa there is no need to provide an excess of bodily heat-productiveness, and the daily pannikin of pony maize which kept Shackleton from perishing in the latter days of his " Farthest South " journey would have kept him at normal temperature here instead of far under.

The readiness to appeal for dhurra, as evidenced by the number of cattle brought up for trade, forced the conclusion that in this quarter at least there was no great scarcity, at least for the time being, this qualification being made on account of the native failing of rarely looking very far ahead of the present. INIoreover, the people were generally in fair condition ; so while it was obvious, in a country where individual houses are often a