In Some Situations, If We Remained A Day,
They Devoured The Grass Beneath My Mat, And Would Have Eaten That Too
Had We Not Laid Down More Grass.
At some of their operations
they beat time in a curious manner.
Hundreds of them are engaged
in building a large tube, and they wish to beat it smooth. At a signal,
they all give three or four energetic beats on the plaster in unison.
It produces a sound like the dropping of rain off a bush when touched.
These insects are the chief agents employed in forming a fertile soil.
But for their labors, the tropical forests, bad as they are now
with fallen trees, would be a thousand times worse. They would be impassable
on account of the heaps of dead vegetation lying on the surface, and emitting
worse effluvia than the comparatively small unburied collections do now.
When one looks at the wonderful adaptations throughout creation,
and the varied operations carried on with such wisdom and skill,
the idea of second causes looks clumsy. We are viewing
the direct handiwork of Him who is the one and only Power in the universe;
wonderful in counsel; in whom we all live, and move, and have our being.
The Batoka of these parts are very degraded in their appearance,
and are not likely to improve, either physically or mentally,
while so much addicted to smoking the mutokwane (`Cannabis sativa').
They like its narcotic effects, though the violent fit of coughing
which follows a couple of puffs of smoke appears distressing, and causes
a feeling of disgust in the spectator. This is not diminished on seeing
the usual practice of taking a mouthful of water, and squirting it out
together with the smoke, then uttering a string of half-incoherent sentences,
usually in self-praise. This pernicious weed is extensively used
in all the tribes of the interior. It causes a species of phrensy,
and Sebituane's soldiers, on coming in sight of their enemies,
sat down and smoked it, in order that they might make an effective onslaught.
I was unable to prevail on Sekeletu and the young Makololo
to forego its use, although they can not point to an old man in the tribe
who has been addicted to this indulgence. I believe it was
the proximate cause of Sebituane's last illness, for it sometimes
occasions pneumonia. Never having tried it, I can not describe
the pleasurable effects it is said to produce, but the hashish
in use among the Turks is simply an extract of the same plant,
and that, like opium, produces different effects on different individuals.
Some view every thing as if looking in through the wide end of a telescope,
and others, in passing over a straw, lift up their feet as if about to cross
the trunk of a tree. The Portuguese in Angola have such a belief
in its deleterious effects that the use of it by a slave
is considered a crime.
NOVEMBER 28TH.
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