They Were Useful In Showing Us
The Parts Least Covered With Jungle.
When we came near a village,
we saw men, women, and children employed in weeding their gardens,
they being great agriculturists.
Most of the men are muscular,
and have large plowman hands. Their color is the same admixture,
from very dark to light olive, that we saw in Londa. Though all have
thick lips and flat noses, only the more degraded of the population
possess the ugly negro physiognomy. They mark themselves by a line
of little raised cicatrices, each of which is a quarter of an inch long;
they extend from the tip of the nose to the root of the hair on the forehead.
It is remarkable that I never met with an Albino in crossing Africa,
though, from accounts published by the Portuguese, I was led to expect
that they were held in favor as doctors by certain chiefs.
I saw several in the south: one at Kuruman is a full-grown woman,
and a man having this peculiarity of skin was met with in the colony.
Their bodies are always blistered on exposure to the sun,
as the skin is more tender than that of the blacks. The Kuruman woman
lived some time at Kolobeng, and generally had on her bosom and shoulders
the remains of large blisters. She was most anxious to be made black,
but nitrate of silver, taken internally, did not produce its usual effect.
During the time I resided at Mabotsa, a woman came to the station
with a fine boy, an Albino. The father had ordered her to throw him away,
but she clung to her offspring for many years. He was remarkably intelligent
for his age. The pupil of the eye was of a pink color, and the eye itself
was unsteady in vision. The hair, or rather wool, was yellow,
and the features were those common among the Bechuanas.
After I left the place the mother is said to have become tired of living apart
from the father, who refused to have her while she retained the son.
She took him out one day, and killed him close to the village of Mabotsa,
and nothing was done to her by the authorities. From having met with
no Albinos in Londa, I suspect they are there also put to death.
We saw one dwarf only in Londa, and brands on him showed
he had once been a slave; and there is one dwarf woman at Linyanti.
The general absence of deformed persons is partly owing to their destruction
in infancy, and partly to the mode of life being a natural one,
so far as ventilation and food are concerned. They use but few
unwholesome mixtures as condiments, and, though their undress exposes them
to the vicissitudes of the temperature, it does not harbor vomites.
It was observed that, when smallpox and measles visited the country,
they were most severe on the half-castes who were clothed. In several tribes,
a child which is said to "tlola", transgress, is put to death.
"Tlolo", or transgression, is ascribed to several curious cases.
A child who cut the upper front teeth before the under was always put to death
among the Bakaa, and, I believe, also among the Bakwains. In some tribes,
a case of twins renders one of them liable to death; and an ox, which,
while lying in the pen, beats the ground with its tail, is treated
in the same way. It is thought to be calling death to visit the tribe.
When I was coming through Londa, my men carried a great number of fowls,
of a larger breed than any they had at home. If one crowed before midnight,
it had been guilty of "tlolo", and was killed. The men often carried them
sitting on their guns, and, if one began to crow in a forest, the owner
would give it a beating, by way of teaching it not to be guilty of crowing
at unseasonable hours.
The women here are in the habit of piercing the upper lip,
and gradually enlarging the orifice until they can insert a shell.
The lip then appears drawn out beyond the perpendicular of the nose,
and gives them a most ungainly aspect. Sekwebu remarked,
"These women want to make their mouths like those of ducks;"
and, indeed, it does appear as if they had the idea that female beauty of lip
had been attained by the `Ornithorhynchus paradoxus' alone.
This custom prevails throughout the country of the Maravi,
and no one could see it without confessing that fashion had never led women
to a freak more mad. We had rains now every day, and considerable cloudiness,
but the sun often burst through with scorching intensity.
All call out against it then, saying, "O the sun! that is rain again."
It was worth noticing that my companions never complained of the heat
while on the highlands, but when we descended into the lowlands of Angola,
and here also, they began to fret on account of it. I myself felt
an oppressive steaminess in the atmosphere which I had not experienced
on the higher lands.
As the game was abundant and my party very large, I had still
to supply their wants with the gun. We slaughtered the oxen
only when unsuccessful in hunting. We always entered into friendly relations
with the head men of the different villages, and they presented grain
and other food freely. One man gave a basinful of rice, the first we met with
in the country. It is never seen in the interior. He said he knew
it was "white man's corn", and when I wished to buy some more, he asked me
to give him a slave. This was the first symptom of the slave-trade
on this side of the country. The last of these friendly head men
was named Mobala; and having passed him in peace, we had no anticipation
of any thing else; but, after a few hours, we reached Selole or Chilole,
and found that he not only considered us enemies, but had actually
sent an express to raise the tribe of Mburuma against us.
All the women of Selole had fled, and the few people we met
exhibited symptoms of terror.
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