[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]

MAEI, TONGOA, EPI AND MALEKULA 31

traveller enters the depths of the virgin forest for the
first time with sacred awe, he feels that he stands
before a still higher revelation of nature when the
first dark, naked man suddenly appears. Silently he
has crept through the thicket, has parted the branches,
and confronts us unexpectedly on a narrow path, shy
and silent, while we are struck with surprise. His
figure is but slightly relieved against the green of the
bushes; he seems part of the silent, luxuriant world
around him, a being Strange to us, a part of those
i realms which we are used to imagine as void of feeling
and incapable of thought. But a word breaks the
spell, intelligence gleams in his face, and what, so far,
has seemed a strange being, belonging rather to the
lower animals than to human-kind, shows himself a
man, and becomes equal to ourselves. Thus the
endless, inhospitable jungle, without open spaces or
streets, without prairies and sun, that dense tangle of
lianas and tree-trunks, shelters men like ourselves.
It seems marvellous to think that in those depths,
dull, dark and silent as the fathomless ocean, men
can live, and we can hardly blame former generations
for denying all kinship with these savages and count-
ing them as animals; especially as the native never
seems more primitive than when he is roaming the
forest, naked but for a bark belt, with a big curly wig
and waving plumes, bow and arrow his only weapons.
When alarmed, he hides in the foliage, and once
swallowed up in the green depths which are his home

and his protection, neither eye nor ear can find any
trace of him.