68 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



branches, less exposed to the fire of the enemy, support strongly- 

 built huts and store-houses, where the families of the fugitives 

 take refuge with all their effects, including, as Nachtigal assures 

 us ] , their domestic animals, such as goats, dogs, and poultry. 

 During the siege of the aerial fortress, which is often successfully 

 defended, long light ladders of withies are let down at night, when 

 no attack need be feared, and the supply of water and provisions 

 is thus renewed from caches or hiding-places round about. In 

 1872 Nachtigal accompanied a predatory excursion to the pagan 

 districts south of Baghirmi, when an attack was made on one of 

 these tree-fortresses. Such citadels can be stormed only at a 

 heavy loss, and as the Gaberi (Baghirmi) warriors had no tools 

 capable of felling the great bombax-tree, they were fain to rest 

 satisfied with picking off a poor wretch now and then, and bar- 

 barously mutilating the bodies as they fell from the overhanging 

 branches. 



Some of these aborigines disfigure their faces by the disk-like 

 lip-ornament, which is also fashionable in Nyassa- 



Mosgu J 



Types and land, and even amongst the South American Boto- 



Contrasts. . 



cudos. 1 he type often diners greatly, and while 

 some of the wide-spread Mosgu tribes are of a dirty black hue, 

 with disagreeable expression, wide open nostrils, thick lips, high 

 cheek-bones, coarse bushy hair, and disproportionate knock- 

 kneed legs, other members of the same family astonished Earth 

 " by the beauty and symmetry of their forms, and by the regularity 

 of their features, which in some had nothing of what is called the 

 Negro type. But I was still more astonished at their complexion, 

 which was very different in different individuals, being in some of 

 a glossy black, and in others of a light copper, or rather rhubarb 

 colour, the intermediate shades being almost entirely wanting. I. 

 observed in one house a really beautiful female who, with her son, 

 about eight or nine years of age, formed a most charming group, 

 well worthy of the hand of an accomplished artist. The boy's 

 form did not yield in any respect to the beautiful symmetry of the 

 most celebrated Grecian statues. His hair, indeed, was very short 

 and curled, but not woolly. He, as well as his mother and the 



1 Sahara and Sudan, II. p. 628. 



