Liberia <*- 



narrow, seldom more than a foot in breadth. These lengths are 

 neatly sewn together, so neatly that " country cloths " of great 

 breadth seem at a little distance to have been woven in one piece. 

 As regards the chase^ it has already been mentioned once or 

 twice in this book that the indigenous Liberians are omnivorous, 

 with as wide a range of appetites possibly as any people in Africa, 

 from the cannibalism of the centre, north-east, and north-west 

 to the eating of bodily parasites ; taking into their dietary almost 

 every beast, bird, reptile, fish, snail, and grub that they can 

 get hold of There does not seem to be any fishing with 

 rod and hook, except on the coast, where the practice has been 

 introduced by the Americo-Liberians ; but in all the rivers 

 and streams fish are captured by other methods : by attracting 

 them to the surface at night-time with the glare of torches made 

 of bundles of reeds or palm fibre, and then spearing the fish ; 

 by the use of hand-nets with long handles ; by baskets and 

 weirs placed across streams or in backwaters to catch the fish 

 descending with the current ; by the attraction of bait, or by 

 poisoning the water with the bark of an acacia, which is said to 

 stupefy the fish. Small animals are caught by means of traps, 

 snares, and springes ; the larger animals are sometimes killed by 

 the poising of a heavily weighted harpoon above the animal's path 

 to the water, or by the digging of pitfalls along such customary 

 routes. Guns are used chiefly for the killing of elephants, 

 leopards, and buffaloes. Formerly, poisoned arrows were much 

 in vogue. Most of the natives in discharging a gun fire it from 

 the right "side, under the armpit, in the attitude shown in the 

 illustration on p. 1019. In the western part of Liberia, the 

 Gora, Gbandi, and Kisi people hunt the elephant assiduously, 

 employing carefully dug pitfalls as well as the use of guns. 



As regards weapons in warfare the Kru tribes use slings 

 and pebbles in addition to guns and spears. Shields are almost 



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