All Are Remarkably Fond Of Their Cattle, And Spend Much Time
In Ornamenting And Adorning Them.
Some are branded all over with a hot knife,
so as to cause a permanent discoloration of the hair,
in lines like the bands on the hide of a zebra.
Pieces of skin
two or three inches long and broad are detached, and allowed to heal
in a dependent position around the head - a strange style of ornament;
indeed, it is difficult to conceive in what their notion of beauty consists.
The women have somewhat the same ideas with ourselves of what
constitutes comeliness. They came frequently and asked for the looking-glass;
and the remarks they made - while I was engaged in reading,
and apparently not attending to them - on first seeing themselves therein,
were amusingly ridiculous. "Is that me?" "What a big mouth I have!"
"My ears are as big as pumpkin-leaves." "I have no chin at all."
Or, "I would have been pretty, but am spoiled by these high cheek-bones."
"See how my head shoots up in the middle!" laughing vociferously all the time
at their own jokes. They readily perceive any defect in each other,
and give nicknames accordingly. One man came alone to have
a quiet gaze at his own features once, when he thought I was asleep;
after twisting his mouth about in various directions, he remarked to himself,
"People say I am ugly, and how very ugly I am indeed!"
The Makololo use all the skins of their oxen for making either
mantles or shields. For the former, the hide is stretched out
by means of pegs, and dried. Ten or a dozen men then collect round it
with small adzes, which, when sharpened with an iron bodkin,
are capable of shaving off the substance of the skin on the fleshy side
until it is quite thin; when sufficiently thin, a quantity of brain
is smeared over it, and some thick milk. Then an instrument
made of a number of iron spikes tied round a piece of wood,
so that the points only project beyond it, is applied to it
in a carding fashion, until the fibres of the bulk of it are quite loose.
Milk or butter is applied to it again, and it forms a garment
nearly as soft as cloth.
The shields are made of hides partially dried in the sun,
and then beaten with hammers until they are stiff and dry.
Two broad belts of a differently-colored skin are sewed
into them longitudinally, and sticks inserted to make them rigid
and not liable to bend easily. The shield is a great protection
in their way of fighting with spears, but they also trust largely
to their agility in springing aside from the coming javelin.
The shield assists when so many spears are thrown that it is impossible
not to receive some of them. Their spears are light javelins;
and, judging from what I have seen them do in elephant-hunting,
I believe, when they have room to make a run and discharge them
with the aid of the jerk of stopping, they can throw them between
forty and fifty yards.
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