All The People, Both Men And Women,
Have All Parts Of Their Bodies Very Curiously And Ingeniously Traced
And Pinked [Tatooed], And Have Their Teeth Filed Very Sharp.
They pull
off all the hair from their eye-lids.
The men have their beards short,
black, and cropped, and the hair on their heads strangely cut into
crisped paths or cross alleys; while others wear theirs in strange
jagged tufts, or other foolish forms; the women's heads being all close
shaved.
Their town contains not more than thirty or forty houses, all
irregularly clustered together, all thatched with reeds; yet each has a
kind of yard inclosed with mud walls, like our hovels or hog-styles in
England. Instead of a locked and bolted door, the entrance is only
closed by a mat, having nothing to be stolen; and for bedsteads they
have only a few billets covered by a mat; yet some have hangings of
mats, especially about their beds. Their furniture consists of two or
three earthen pots to hold water, and to boil such provisions as they
can get; a gourd or two for palm-wine; half a gourd to serve as a
drinking cup; a few earthen dishes for their loblolly or pottage; a
basket for the maria [wife], to gather cockles; and a knapsack for the
man, made of bark, to carry his provisions, with his pipe and tobacco.
When a negro man goes from home, he has always his knapsack on his back,
in which he has his provisions and tobacco, his pipe being seldom from
his mouth; besides which, he has always his do-little sword by his
side, made by themselves of such iron as they get from the Europeans;
his bow also, and quiver full of poisoned arrows, pointed with iron like
a snake's-tongue, or else a case of javelins or darts, having iron heads
of good breadth and made sharp, sometimes both.
The men of this country are large and well-made, strong and courageous,
and of civilized manners for heathens; as they keep most faithfully to
their wives, of whom they are not a little jealous. I could not learn
their religion; for though they have some idols, they seem to know that
there is a God in heaven, as, when we asked them about their wooden
puppets, they used to lift up their hands to heaven. All their children
are circumcised, but I could not learn the reason why. They are very
just and true in their dealings, and theft is punished with instant
death. When any one dies, a small thatched roof is erected over his
bier, under which are set earthen pots kept always full of water, and
some earthen plates with different kinds of food, a few bones being
stuck up around the body. To the south of this bay, some thirty or forty
leagues into the interior country, there are very fierce people, who are
cannibals, and sometimes infest the natives of Sierra Leona.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 215 of 424
Words from 111808 to 112307
of 221842
