The Trees Form
An Overlapping Border, And Render Escape Almost Impossible.
The Whole Is Carefully Decked With Short Green Rushes, Making The Pit
Like A Concealed Pitfall.
As the hedges are frequently about a mile long,
and about as much apart at their extremities, a tribe
Making a circle
three or four miles round the country adjacent to the opening,
and gradually closing up, are almost sure to inclose a large body of game.
Driving it up with shouts to the narrow part of the hopo,
men secreted there throw their javelins into the affrighted herds,
and on the animals rush to the opening presented at the converging hedges,
and into the pit, till that is full of a living mass. Some escape by running
over the others, as a Smithfield market-dog does over the sheep's backs.
It is a frightful scene. The men, wild with excitement,
spear the lovely animals with mad delight; others of the poor creatures,
borne down by the weight of their dead and dying companions,
every now and then make the whole mass heave in their smothering agonies.
The Bakwains often killed between sixty and seventy head of large game
at the different hopos in a single week; and as every one, both rich and poor,
partook of the prey, the meat counteracted the bad effects
of an exclusively vegetable diet. When the poor, who had no salt,
were forced to live entirely on roots, they were often troubled
with indigestion. Such cases we had frequent opportunities of seeing
at other times, for, the district being destitute of salt,
the rich alone could afford to buy it. The native doctors,
aware of the cause of the malady, usually prescribed some of that ingredient
with their medicines. The doctors themselves had none, so the poor
resorted to us for aid. We took the hint, and henceforth cured the disease
by giving a teaspoonful of salt, minus the other remedies.
Either milk or meat had the same effect, though not so rapidly as salt.
Long afterward, when I was myself deprived of salt for four months,
at two distinct periods, I felt no desire for that condiment,
but I was plagued by very great longing for the above articles of food.
This continued as long as I was confined to an exclusively vegetable diet,
and when I procured a meal of flesh, though boiled in
perfectly fresh rain-water, it tasted as pleasantly saltish
as if slightly impregnated with the condiment. Milk or meat,
obtained in however small quantities, removed entirely
the excessive longing and dreaming about roasted ribs of fat oxen,
and bowls of cool thick milk gurgling forth from the big-bellied calabashes;
and I could then understand the thankfulness to Mrs. L.
often expressed by poor Bakwain women, in the interesting condition,
for a very little of either.
In addition to other adverse influences, the general uncertainty,
though not absolute want of food, and the necessity of frequent absence
for the purpose of either hunting game or collecting roots and fruits,
proved a serious barrier to the progress of the people in knowledge.
Our own education in England is carried on at the comfortable
breakfast and dinner table, and by the cosy fire, as well as in
the church and school.
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