146 WILD LIFE UNDER THE EQUATOR. 
ple believed could never be pierced by spears or arrows. 
So we might say that King Mbango thought himself in- 
vulnerable. 
The people of the village were a hard set of quar- | 
relsome-looking fellows. The women were not beautiful, 
indeed they were very ugly; and even King Mbango’s 
head-wife was far from being a belle. She was a tall 
woman; her teeth were filed to a point; her hair was 
anointed profusely with palm-oil; her face was all tat- 
tooed; and on each side of her cheek, a little below the 
eye, there were two round spots of flesh of the size of a 
quarter of a dollar. They had succeeded in raising the 
flesh, and it must have required a good deal of skill. On 
her chest any amount of fantastical tattooing could be 
seen; even her back was not free from this ornamenta- 
tion. Such is the faithful picture of Mbango’s head- 
wife, whose name I have forgotten. She wore several 
brass anklets, and also several bracelets. King Mbango 
had a score of wives besides her, but she was the first 
-woman he had married; hence she was the Queen—the 
_. foremost of them all. When Mbango married a new 
wife, she gave her advice and told her how she must love 
Mbango, how she must obey him, how laboriously she . 
must cultivate the soil in order to bring food to her 
husband, and how she must often fish in order to feed | 
her lord well. Ifshe does all this, the king will say, “This 
wife really loves me.” But if she does not, beware! 
If she is lazy, the lash of whips made from the hide of 
the hippopotamus, or of the manatee, will remind her 
of her duties, and of the love she owes to her husband. 
Do not think for a moment that women in that far-off 
country of which I speak to you choose their husbands. 
