Excerpt from The Life of a South African Tribe

Dear Sir,

Fifteen years ago I had the great pleasure of receiving your visit in Lourenco Marques where I was staying as the head of the Swiss Romande Mission. You had been travelling all through South Africa and, though momentous political problems were before your mind at that time, bearing on the relations between the white races of that Sub-Continent, you had devoted considerable attention to the native tribes all over the land and tried to understand what they were and what their future would be. But you had quickly noticed how scant is our knowledge about them and you were trying to stimulate men on the spot to undertake a scientific study of their primitive life. In the course of our conversation, I was struck by the following remark which you made to me: "How thankful would we be, we, men of the XIXth century, if a Roman had taken the trouble to fully investigate the habits of our Celtic forefathers! This work has not been done and we shall always remain ignorant of things which would have interested us so much!"

This observation was quite a revelation to me. It is possible then, that these natives for whom we went to Africa would themselves benefit also by such a study and that, in the course of time, they would be grateful to know what they were when they were still leading their savage life... This argument added to so many others had never occured to me. Up to that date I had already collected some Ronga tales and studied some curious customs of the tribe.

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