From the above and scores of other authoritative testimonies which
might have been cited to the direct contrary of our traveller's tale
under this head, we can plainly perceive that Mr. Froude's love is
not only blind, but adder-deaf as well. We shall now contemplate him
under circumstances where his feelings are quite other than those of
a partisan.



BOOK I: VOYAGE OUT

[34] That Mr. Froude, despite his professions to the contrary, did
not go out on his explorations unhampered by prejudices, seems clear
enough from the following quotation:--

"There was a small black boy among us, evidently of pure blood, for
his hair was wool and his colour black as ink. His parents must have
been well-to-do, for the boy had been to Europe to be educated. The
officers on board and some of the ladies played with him as they
would play with a monkey. He had little more sense than a monkey,
perhaps less, and the gestures of him grinning behind gratings and
perching out his long thin arms between the bars were curiously
suggestive of the original from whom we are told now that all of us
came. The worst of it was that, being lifted above his own people,
he had been taught to despise them. He was spoilt as a black and
could not be made into a white, and this I found afterwards was the
invariable and dangerous consequence whenever a superior negro
contrived to raise himself. He might do well enough himself, but his
family feel their blood as degradation. His [35] children will not
marry among their own people, and not only will no white girl marry a