Child of Storm

We white people think that we know everything. For instance, we think

that we understand human nature. And so we do, as human nature appears

to us, with all its trappings and accessories seen dimly through the

glass of our conventions, leaving out those aspects of it which we have

forgotten or do not think it polite to mention. But I, Allan Quatermain,

reflecting upon these matters in my ignorant and uneducated fashion,

have always held that no one really understands human nature who has

not studied it in the rough. Well, that is the aspect of it with which I

have been best acquainted.

For most of the years of my life I have handled the raw material, the

virgin ore, not the finished ornament that is smelted out of it--if,

indeed, it is finished yet, which I greatly doubt. I dare say that a

time may come when the perfected generations--if Civilisation, as we

understand it, really has a future and any such should be allowed

to enjoy their hour on the World--will look back to us as crude,

half-developed creatures whose only merit was that we handed on the

flame of life.

Maybe, maybe, for everything goes by comparison; and at one end of the

ladder is the ape-man, and at the other, as we hope, the angel. No, not

the angel; he belongs to a different sphere, but that last expression

of humanity upon which I will not speculate. While man is man--that is,

before he suffers the magical death-change into spirit, if such should

be his destiny--well, he will remain man. I mean that the same passions

will sway him; he will aim at the same ambitions; he will know the same

joys and be oppressed by the same fears, whether he lives in a Kafir

hut or in a golden palace; whether he walks upon his two feet or, as for

aught I know he may do one day, flies through the air. This is certain:

that in the flesh he can never escape from our atmosphere, and while

he breathes it, in the main with some variations prescribed by climate,

local law and religion, he will do much as his forefathers did for

countless ages.

That is why I have always found the savage so interesting, for in him,

nakedly and forcibly expressed, we see those eternal principles which

direct our human destiny.

To descend from these generalities, that is why also I, who hate

writing, have thought it worth while, at the cost of some labour to

myself, to occupy my leisure in what to me is a strange land--for

although I was born in England, it is not my country--in setting down

various experiences of my life that do, in my opinion, interpret this

our universal nature. I dare say that no one will ever read them; still,

perhaps they are worthy of record, and who knows? In days to come they

may fall into the hands of others and prove of value. At any rate, they

are true stories of interesting peoples, who, if they should survive in

the savage competition of the nations, probably are doomed to undergo

great changes. Therefore I tell of them before they began to change.