African Buffalo Shooting. 171 



anything, he, she or the brat is decapitated, the head 

 hung on a pole, and the body and the object stolen 

 placed in a conspicuous part of the market. When 

 more than one execution has taken place, word is sent 

 to the cannibals, and they come in and carry off the 

 dead, to the disgust of the vultures who had assembled 

 on the top of the roofs of the sheds, waiting for the 

 surging mass of people to disappear before pouncing 

 down on the corpses. We heard of these cannibals, 

 and L. asked the Premier to send some for us to see, 

 so one day three were ushered in. They wore a kilt 

 of grass and were armed with spears, and looked a 

 sleek, well-grown race, and far from repulsive. I saw 

 a female afterwards in the market-place, and she was 

 rather comely for an African. Well, our visitors were 

 told to sit down and we discoursed with them by 

 means of an interpreter, but we learnt very little of 

 their modus Vivendi. One of them drew something 

 from his packet and began to nibble it. Our horror 

 may be imagined when we found it to be the charred 

 remains of a human hand ; so they were quickly 

 ejected, but although they pretended, they did not 

 know they had done anything outre, I feel convinced 

 it was an act of bravado. After a six weeks' pros- 

 tration more or less from fever, I was asked to go to 

 Lakoja, to receive recruits there, and out of the 

 hundreds on our books, we by force obtained only 

 twenty-three, for all the others had disappeared, and 

 this was the result of an expenditure computed at 

 10,000 ! We eventually got the twenty-three to the 

 Congo, where meeting others of their race from Lagos 

 and the Gold Coast, they became reconciled to their 

 fate, and did good service. 



