prevented the bad effects of an exclusively vegetable diet.
The district being destitute of salt, the rich alone could afford
to buy it, and, when the poor, who had none, were forced to
live entirely on roots, they were often troubled with indigestion. The native doctors, aware of the cause of the malady,
usually prescribed some of that condiment with their medicines.
Either milk or meat was equally remedial, though not so
rapid in its effects as salt. Long afterwards, when at two
distinct periods I was myself deprived of it for four months, I
felt no craving for it, but had a great longing for milk and meat.
This continued as long as I was confined to a vegetable diet,
and when I procured a meal of flesh, though boiled in perfectly
fresh rain-water, it tasted pleasantly saltish.
In addition to other adverse influences, the necessity of frequent absence for the purpose of either hunting game or collecting roots and fruits, proved a serious barrier to the progress of the people in knowledge. Sending the Gospel to the heathen must include much more than is implied in the usual picture of a missionary, which is that of a man going about with a Bible under his arm. The promotion of commerce ought to be specially attended to, as this, more speedily than anything else, demolishes that sense of isolation which heathenism engenders, and makes the tribes feel themselves mutually dependent on each other. Those laws which still prevent free commercial intercourse among civilized nations seem to be nothing but the remains of our own heathenism. By commerce we may not only put a stop to the slave-trade, but introduce the negro family into the body corporate of nations, no one member of which can suffer without the others suffering with it. This, in both Eastern and Western Africa, would lead to a much larger diffusion of the blessings of civilization than efforts exclusively spiritual and educational confined to any one tribe. These should of course be carried on at the same time at large central and healthy stations. Neither civilization nor Christianity can be promoted alone. In fact, they are inseparable.
