General Remarks.—­A frank, joking, but determined manner, joined with an air of showing more confidence in the good faith of the natives than you really feel, is the best.  It is observed, that a sea-captain generally succeeds in making an excellent impression on savages:  they thoroughly appreciate common sense, truth, and uprightness; and are not half such fools as strangers usually account them.  If a savage does mischief, look on him as you would on a kicking mule, or a wild animal, whose nature is to be unruly and vicious, and keep your temper quite unruffled.  Evade the mischief, if you can:  if you cannot, endure it; and do not trouble yourself overmuch about your dignity, or about retaliating on the man, except it be on the grounds of expediency.  There are even times when any assumption of dignity becomes ludicrous, and the traveller must, as Mungo Park had once to do, “lay it down as a rule to make himself as useless and as insignificant as possible, as the only means of recovering his liberty.”

Bush Law.—­It is impossible but that a traveller must often take the law into his own hands.  Some countries, no doubt, are governed with a strong arm by a savage despot; to whom or to whose subordinates appeals must of course be made; but, for the most part, the system of life among savages is—­

“The simple rule, the good old plan—­
That they should take, who have the power;
And they should keep, who can.”

Where there is no civil law, or any kind of substitute for it, each man is, as it were, a nation in himself; and then the traveller ought to be guided in his actions by the motives that influence nations, whether to make war or to abstain from it, rather than by the criminal code of civilised countries.  The traveller must settle in his own mind what his scale of punishments should be; and it will be found a convenient principle that a culprit should be punished in proportion to the quantity of harm that he has done, rather than according to the presumed wickedness of the offence.  Thus, if two men were caught, one of whom had stolen an ox, and the other a sheep, it would be best to flog the first much more heavily than the second; it is a measure of punishment more intelligible to savages than ours.  The principle of double or treble restitution, to which they are well used, is of the same nature.  If all theft be punished, your administration will be a reign of terror; for every savage, even your best friends, will pilfer little things from you, whenever they have a good opportunity.  Be very severe if any of your own party steal trifles from natives:  order double or treble restitution, if the man does not know better; and, if he does, a flogging besides, and not in place of it.

Seizing Food.—­On arriving at an encampment, the natives commonly run away in fright.  If you are hungry, or in serious need of anything that they have, go boldly into their huts, take just what you want, and leave fully adequate payment.  It is absurd to be over-scrupulous in these cases.