FETICHISM OF THE BANTU NEGROES. 



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usually began with a lively recitative by the best-voiced man of the 

 company, with which the others fell in in harmonious refrain. The 

 simple, endlessly repeated text was constantly taken up anew, and 

 related to a fact not very interesting in itself : " We are car 

 Souza's goods to Kulamushita, cloth, pearls, powder, 

 and brass wire ; Souza is rich, Souza will give us good 

 schnapps." Refrain : " Yes, Souza will give us good 

 schnapps." Regular songs do not appear to exist, and 

 the airs that are sung of evenings over the camp-fires 

 are of the same improvised character. 



Besides his voice, the negro makes music with what- 

 ever will make a noise — two sticks, old fruit-cans, iron 

 articles, or stones. He also has a number of musical 

 instruments that are not to be desjjised, the best of 

 which, the maximha, would not be unworthy to be 

 called a clavier. 



Besides music and songs, the evening circles are 

 enlivened with stories of adventure and occasional ani- 

 mal fables, which I am not able to recall. One story, 

 which was told me by a mulatto woman in Malansh, 

 was evidently an adaj^tation of a Portuguese nurse's 

 story. In these tales the interposition of an interval 

 between two events is expressed in a very curious man- 

 ner, as, "And now he waited a month, r-r-r-r-r . . . 

 and he waited another month, r-r-r-r-r," each trilling 

 with the tongue, which generally lasted about half a 

 minute, answering for the designated interval. 



There is not much to be said about the scientific 

 conceptions of the negroes. Most of our clews to their 

 character are derived from their verbal expressions. 

 Among the heavenly bodies they distinguish the sun 

 and moon, the larger planets, and the fixed stars, the 

 latter only in general, without taking consideration of 

 individual stars or particular groups. The lai-ger plan- 

 ets are called wives of the moon, w'hence it proceeds 

 that chaste Luna is regarded as a man. Little use is 

 made of the rising and setting of the sun to express di- 

 rection, which is usually described as " up " or " down," 

 according to the course of the streams. 



Of minerals, the natives distinguish between stone 

 and earth, and the latter as dry (sand) and moist (mud). 

 Of earths, they speak of red earth, or laterite, and white or gray earth, 

 alluvium. Bog-iron ore, which is abundant, is "the great stone." Among 

 the metals, copper is known ; and the word signifying copper is in some 

 of the dialects applied to the moon. Their vocabulary is rich in names 

 of animals and plants. Not one of the plants growing in the plains is 



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