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Bentarasko Benta Section 02
Page 09
Somewhat higher than the fish in the scale of life is the frog. Although he begins life as a fish, and in the tadpole state breathes by gills, he soon discards the water-diluted air of the pond, and with perfect lungs boldly inhales the pure air of the upper world. His life as a tadpole, although so fish-like, is much inferior to true fish life: for though the fish has not the perfect lung, he has a modification of it which he fills with air, not for breathing purposes, but as an air-sac to make him float like a bubble in the water. Will he rise to the surface? he inflates the air-bladder. Will he sink to the bottom? he compresses the air-bladder. But in the frog the air-bladder changes into the lungs, and is never the delicate balloon which floats the fish in aqueous space. When the frog's lungs are perfected, his gills close, and he forever abandons fish-life, though being a cold-blooded creature he needs comparatively little air, and delights to return to his childhood's home in the bottom of the pond. But although he can stay under water for a long time, he is obliged to hold his breath while there, and when he would breathe must come to the surface to do so. It is possible to drown him by holding him under water.
No people could be better fitted than the Apache to conduct continuous predatory warfare. Every form of plant and animal life pays him tribute. An entirely naked Indian, without implements of any sort, would stop on a mountain slope and in a few minutes be sitting by a cheerful fire preparing a welcome meal. With a fragment of stone he would shape fire-sticks from the dead stalk of a yucca. Sitting with the flattened piece held firmly by his feet, a pinch of sand at the point of contact between the two sticks, with a few deft whirls of the round stick over his improvised hearth the lone traveller would soon have a fire kindled. Into the blaze he would cast a few sections of green, juicy mescal(1) stalk which, when cooked, would afford him both food and drink. This part of his meal finished, the Apache might gather other dead yucca stalks, split them, and often find within small stores of honey.
For the second, which is dissimulation; it followeth many times upon secrecy, by a necessity; so that he that will be secret, must be a dissembler in some degree. For men are too cunning, to suffer a man to keep an indifferent carriage between both, and to be secret, without swaying the balance on either side. They will so beset a man with questions, and draw him on, and pick it out of him, that, without an absurd silence, he must show an inclination one way; or if he do not, they will gather as much by his silence, as by his speech. As for equivocations, or oraculous speeches, they cannot hold out long. So that no man can be secret, except he give himself a little scope of dissimulation; which is, as it were, but the skirts or train of secrecy.
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