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We repudiate the notion in the name of that reason which shows us that the Infinite Mind, whose light and life we share, was millions of years preparing this earth for man's habitation, aeons of time so fashioning the course of things that a body might be prepared in which that mind which we call soul might energise; aeons of time so ordering the course of events that man should emerge one day from the savagedom and animalism of the past to enter upon the path of a progress which we believe to be endless.
Presently we found the smooth road, and we trod gaily with elastic steps, with limbs quickened for the march which we all knew to be drawing near its end. What cared we now for the difficulties we had encountered for the rough and cruel forests, for the thorny thickets and hurtful grass, for the jangle of all savagedom, of which we had been the joyless audience! To-morrow!
Of later date, and still more rapid in development, Australia rises, a triumphant proof of England's power to rescue wild lands from barrenness; to wrest from utter savagedom those mighty tracts of the earth's surface wasted from the creation of the world, a darkness to be enlightened by English colonization.
Not fifty years since there was not an island in the wide Pacific which had risen out of a state of the most complete savagedom. Now, in the eastern part of the ocean, whole groups have embraced Christianity.
In the origin of the boomerang and the shell fish-hook we have instances, hardly to be doubted, of direct inspirations from Nature, proofs of the art and the infinite patience with which she sets her copies and expounds her texts. All the blacks of my acquaintance have had the rough edges of savagedom worn down.
All are followers of the Prophet, and their social customs are consequently much the same as those of any other Mohammedan race, though with a good admixture of savagedom. They have a happy knack of giving a nickname to every European with whom they have to do, such nickname generally making reference to something peculiar or striking in his habits, temper, or appearance.
Nearly all savages have some idea of earthenware; but the scale of advancement of a country between savagedom and civilization may generally be determined by the style of its pottery.
Here we find ourselves in the very heart of savagedom surrounded by the vast remains of a remote but civilised and evidently highly cultivated race; and though at present we have nothing more than the merest surmise to help us to their identification, I have little doubt that the result of our explorations and investigations will be to satisfy us that we have in very deed found in these ponderous ruins the remains of Ancient Ophir."
For according to the answer we get to questions such as these, so shall we be the better prepared to expect the people to have been peaceable citizens, or sullen, miserable, and dangerous ruffians, goaded to frequent outbursts of ferocious savagedom by hunger, oppression, hatred, and despair. Six hundred years ago no parish in Norfolk had more than a part of its land under tillage.
On the north side of the river the natives were either stark naked or wore a mere apology for clothing in the shape of a skin slung across their shoulders. The river appeared to be the limit of utter savagedom, and the people of Unyoro considered the indecency of nakedness precisely in the same light as Europeans.
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