64 LEAVES FROM THE 



Cape TowTi epicure. Of the teeth, Odoardus Barbosa 

 justly saith, ' Hanno gli ippopotami i denti, come gli ele- 

 fante piccoli et e migliore avorio di quelle de gli elefanti, 

 e piii bianco, e piu forte, e di maniera cbe non perde il 

 colore/ For this last reason the ivory of the canine 

 teeth is highly valued by the manufacturers of those 

 pearly rows which the artist knows so well how to form 

 when he makes the beautiful dental series of rosy eighteen 

 appear between the withered lips of eighty. Nor were 

 the ancients ignorant of its value in a somewhat higher 

 branch of art. Pausanias relates that the face of Cybele 

 was formed of the teeth of these animals. 



The touoh skin in ancient times was fashioned into 

 helmets and bucklers. ' The skin or hide of his backe 

 is unpenetrable (whereof are made targuets and head- 

 pieces of doubty proof that no weapon wil pierce), unlesse 

 it be soked in water or some liquor,' saith the worthy 

 Philemon Holland, in his translation of Pliny. It is, in 

 these modern days, made into whips, and with these in- 

 struments terrible punishments, not unfrequently fatal, 

 like the Russian knout, are inflicted. 



Major Denham makes one shudder when he describes 

 the execution of one of those wickedly hypocritical judg- 

 ments, which, affecting to avoid a sentence of death, in- 

 flicts it in one of its most agonizing forms. 



Oppressively hot as the weather was, the sheikh, he 

 states, admitted of no excuse for breaking the Rhamadan, 

 and any man who was caught suffering his thirst to get 

 the better of him in an African June, or visiting his 

 wives between sunrise and sunset, was sentenced to 400 

 stripes with one of these deadly whips. 



A -wretched woman bore two hundred stripes — the 

 number to which she was sentenced — Avithin the court- 

 yard of the palace, and was afterwards carried home 

 senseless. 



Her paramour received his punishment in the dender 



