Let me at last divest myself of these old English spectacles, framed
in oak and with lenses of horn, to bury them for ever in this mountain,
which for half a century and upwards has looked down on the struggles
of a young and feeble people against foreign aggression and domestic
foes, and where a few months ago I sang the praises of British
civilisation, lamenting that it had been planted here and abundantly
watered with blood, only to be plucked up again and cast into the sea.
After my rambles in the interior, where I carried about in me only a
fading remnant of that old time-honoured superstition to prevent the
most perfect sympathy between me and the natives I mixed with, I cannot
say that I am of that opinion now. I cannot believe that if this country
had been conquered and re-colonised by England, and all that is crooked
in it made straight according to our notions, my intercourse with the
people would have had the wild, delightful flavour I have found in it.
And if that distinctive flavour cannot be had along with the material
prosperity resulting from Anglo-Saxon energy, I must breathe the wish
that this land may never know such prosperity. I do not wish to be
murdered; no man does; yet rather than see the ostrich and deer chased
beyond the horizon, the flamingo and black-necked swan slain on the
blue lakes, and the herdsman sent to twang his romantic guitar in Hades
as a preliminary to security of person, I would prefer to go about
prepared at any moment to defend my life against the sudden assaults
of the assassin.
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