in SOME CONTEASTS 29 



under a consuming sun, the wooden pestles of the 

 negresses fall noisily in their mahogany mortars. 

 Thousands of bracelet-encircled arms are worn out 

 in this toil, and the talkative and quarrelsome 

 workers mingle with this monotonous sound the 

 chorus of their high-pitched voices, which seenl as 

 if they issued from the throats of monkeys. The 

 result is very characteristic din, which, heard from 

 afar, in the thickets and in the desert, announces 

 the proximity of these African villages. The 

 product of this eternal pounding, which wears out 

 generations of women, is a coarse millet flour, 

 which is made into a tasteless kind of porridge, 

 called kusskuss. It is this kusskuss which is the 

 basal article of diet among the black races." 



Some other tribes again live chiefly on yams, and 

 so on, but generally each tribe has one special food- 

 plant, and except where they have been taught 

 by Europeans, they do not plough, they do not 

 manure, they have no rotation of crops. They 

 grow food, that is, in the most extravagant way 

 possible. Now this has been going on for count- 

 less ages. There is reason to believe that a great 

 part of Africa which has now no trees, was once 

 forest-covered, and has had its forests destroyed by 

 the natives. In spite of the climate and the fertile 

 soil the natives are few in number, and in many 

 cases have moved in historic times from one part of 



