am a woman as she is, and you are
a man, and they say in the kraals that men love women better than women
love women. But it is a lie, though this is true, that if a woman loves
a man she forgets all other love. Have I not seen it? I gather her
flowers--beautiful flowers; I climb the rocks where you would never dare
to go to find them; you pluck a piece of orange bloom in the garden and
give it to her. What does she do?--she takes the orange bloom, she puts
it in her breast, and lets my flowers die. I call to her--she does not
hear me--she is thinking. You whisper to some one far away, and she
hears and smiles. She used to kiss me sometimes; now she kisses that
white brat you brought, because you brought it. Oh, I see it all--all; I
have seen it from the first; you are stealing her from us, stealing her
to yourself, and those who loved her before you came are forgotten. Be
careful, Macumazahn, be careful, lest I am revenged upon you. You, you
hate me; you think me half a monkey; that servant of yours calls me
Baboon-woman. Well, I have lived with baboons, and they are clever--yes,
they can play tricks and know things that you don't, and I am cleverer
than they, for I have learnt the wisdom of white people also, and I say
to you, Walk softly, Macumazahn, or you will fall into a pit," and with
one more look of malice she was gone.

I stood for a moment reflecting. I was afraid of this strange creature
who seemed to combine the cunning of the great apes that had reared
her with the passions and skill of human kind. I foreboded evil at her
hands. And yet there was something almost touching in the fierceness of
her jealousy. It is generally supposed that this passion only exists in
strength when the object loved is of another sex from the lover, but I
confess that, both in this instance and in some others which I have met
with, this has not been my experience. I have known men, and especially
uncivilized men, who were as jealous of the affection of their friend
or master as any lover could be of that of his mistress; and who has
not seen cases of the same thing where parents and their children are
concerned? But the lower one gets in the scale of humanity, the more
readily this passion thrives; indeed, it may be said to come to its
intensest perfection in brutes. Women are more jealous than men,
small-hearted men are more jealous than those of larger mind and wider
sympathy, and animals are the most jealous of all. Now Hendri