The Locusts Are Strongly Vegetable In Taste,
The Flavor Varying With The Plants On Which They Feed.
There is
a physiological reason why locusts and honey should be eaten together.
Some are roasted and pounded into meal, which, eaten with a little salt,
is palatable.
It will keep thus for months. Boiled, they are disagreeable;
but when they are roasted I should much prefer locusts to shrimps,
though I would avoid both if possible.
In traveling we sometimes suffered considerably from scarcity of meat,
though not from absolute want of food. This was felt more especially
by my children; and the natives, to show their sympathy,
often gave them a large kind of caterpillar, which they seemed to relish;
these insects could not be unwholesome, for the natives devoured them
in large quantities themselves.
Another article of which our children partook with eagerness
was a very large frog, called "Matlametlo".*
-
* The Pyxicephalus adspersus of Dr. Smith. Length of head and body,
5-1/2 inches; fore legs, 3 inches; hind legs, 6 inches.
Width of head posteriorly, 3 inches; of body, 4-1/2 inches.
-
These enormous frogs, which, when cooked, look like chickens,
are supposed by the natives to fall down from thunder-clouds,
because after a heavy thunder-shower the pools, which are filled
and retain water a few days, become instantly alive with this loud-croaking,
pugnacious game. This phenomenon takes place in the driest parts
of the desert, and in places where, to an ordinary observer,
there is not a sign of life. Having been once benighted
in a district of the Kalahari where there was no prospect of getting water
for our cattle for a day or two, I was surprised to hear
in the fine still evening the croaking of frogs. Walking out
until I was certain that the musicians were between me and our fire,
I found that they could be merry on nothing else but a prospect of rain.
From the Bushmen I afterward learned that the matlametlo makes a hole
at the root of certain bushes, and there ensconces himself
during the months of drought. As he seldom emerges, a large variety of spider
takes advantage of the hole, and makes its web across the orifice.
He is thus furnished with a window and screen gratis; and no one but a Bushman
would think of searching beneath a spider's web for a frog.
They completely eluded my search on the occasion referred to;
and as they rush forth into the hollows filled by the thunder-shower
when the rain is actually falling, and the Bechuanas are cowering under
their skin garments, the sudden chorus struck up simultaneously from all sides
seems to indicate a descent from the clouds.
The presence of these matlametlo in the desert in a time of drought
was rather a disappointment, for I had been accustomed to suppose
that the note was always emitted by them when they were chin-deep in water.
Their music was always regarded in other spots as the most pleasant sound
that met the ear after crossing portions of the thirsty desert;
and I could fully appreciate the sympathy for these animals shown by Aesop,
himself an African, in his fable of the "Boys and the Frogs".
It is remarkable that attempts have not been made to any extent
to domesticate some of the noble and useful creatures of Africa in England.
The eland, which is the most magnificent of all antelopes,
would grace the parks of our nobility more than deer. This animal,
from the excellence of its flesh, would be appropriate to our own country;
and as there is also a splendid esculent frog nearly as large as a chicken,
it would no doubt tend to perpetuate the present alliance
if we made a gift of that to France.
The scavenger beetle is one of the most useful of all insects,
as it effectually answers the object indicated by the name.
Where they abound, as at Kuruman, the villages are sweet and clean,
for no sooner are animal excretions dropped than, attracted by the scent,
the scavengers are heard coming booming up the wind. They roll away
the droppings of cattle at once, in round pieces often as large
as billiard-balls; and when they reach a place proper by its softness
for the deposit of their eggs and the safety of their young,
they dig the soil out from beneath the ball till they have quite let it down
and covered it: they then lay their eggs within the mass.
While the larvae are growing, they devour the inside of the ball
before coming above ground to begin the world for themselves.
The beetles with their gigantic balls look like Atlas
with the world on his back; only they go backward, and, with their heads down,
push with the hind legs, as if a boy should roll a snow-ball with his legs
while standing on his head. As we recommend the eland to John Bull,
and the gigantic frog to France, we can confidently recommend this beetle
to the dirty Italian towns and our own Sanitary Commissioners.
In trying to benefit the tribes living under the Boers
of the Cashan Mountains, I twice performed a journey of about
three hundred miles to the eastward of Kolobeng. Sechele had become
so obnoxious to the Boers that, though anxious to accompany me in my journey,
he dared not trust himself among them. This did not arise from
the crime of cattle-stealing; for that crime, so common among the Caffres,
was never charged against his tribe, nor, indeed, against any Bechuana tribe.
It is, in fact, unknown in the country, except during actual warfare.
His independence and love of the English were his only faults.
In my last journey there, of about two hundred miles,
on parting at the River Marikwe he gave me two servants,
"to be," as he said, "his arms to serve me," and expressed regret that
he could not come himself.
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