I found a flourishing colony of horrid bug-like
insects; my pockets were alive, my camera was full of them, they
had crawled into my shoes, my books, my luggage, they were crawling,
flying, dancing everywhere. Perfectly disgusted, I threw off all my
clothes, and had my boys shake and clean out every piece. For a week
I had to have everything cleaned at least once a day, and even then I
found the loathsome creatures in every fold, under straps, in pouches.

On that afternoon I had a great success as an artist. My drawings
of pigs, trees and men went the rounds and were quite immoderately
admired, and preserved as we would a sketch of Holbein's. These
drawings have to be done as simply as possible and fairly large, else
the natives do not understand them. They consider every line essential,
and do not understand shadows or any impressionistic treatment. We must
remember that in our civilized art we work with many symbols, some
of which have but a vague resemblance to the object they represent,
whose meaning we know, while the savage does not. This was the reason
why I had often no success at all with what I considered masterpieces,
while the natives went into raptures over drawings I thought utter
failures. At any rate, they made me quite a popular person.

The sick chief complained to me that a late wife of his had been
poisoned, and as he took me for a great "witch-doctor," he asked me
to find out the murderer. To the native, sickness or death is not
natural, but always the consequence of witchcraft, either on the part
of enemies or spirits. The terribly high death-rate in the last years
makes it seem all the more probable that mysterious influences are
at work, and the native suspects enemies everywhere, whom he tries
to render harmless by killing them. This leads to endless murders
and vendettas, which decimate the population nearly as much as the
diseases do. The natives know probably something about poisons,
but they are always poisons that have to be mixed with food, and
this is not an easy thing to do, as every native prepares his food
himself. Most of the dreaded poisons are therefore simply charms,
stones or other objects, which would be quite harmless in themselves,
but become capable of killing by the mere terror they inspire in the
victim. If the belief in these charms could be destroyed, a great deal
of the so-called poisoning would cease, and it may be a good policy to
deny the existence of poison, even a