388 THE WORLD'S WONDERS. 



CANNIBALS CAUGHT IN THE ACT. 



WHILE traveling a short distance from Mamohela they came 

 upon some Manyuemas who had shortly before killed a man, and, 

 after cutting him up, were boiling his body with bananas prepar- 

 atory to a feast. Livingstone says it is not the want of food 

 that has led the Manyuema to cannibalism, for the country is 

 full of everything, apparently, both vegetable and animal, that 

 human appetite could crave. Says he : 



" Goats, sheep, fowls, dogs, pigs, abound in the villages, 

 while the forest affords elephants, zebras, buffaloes, antelopes, 

 and in the streams there are many varieties of fish. The nitro- 

 genous ingredients are abundant, and they have dainties in palm- 

 toddy and tobacco or bange. The soil is so fruitful that mere 

 scraping off the weeds is as good as plowing ; so that the reason 

 for cannibalism does not lie in starvation or in want of animal 

 matter, as was said to be the case with the New Zealanders. The 

 only feasible reason I can discover is a depraved appetite, giving 

 an extraordinary craving for meat which we call 'high.' They 

 are said to bury a dead body for a couple of days in the soil in a 

 forest, and in that time, owing to the climate, it becomes putrid 

 enough for the strongest stomachs." 



MEETING WITH STANLEY. 



ON the 23d of October Livingstone reached Ujiji, reduced 

 almost to a skeleton and distressed by a score of anxieties, only 

 to find that the third lot of goods sent him from Zanzibar had 

 been stolen, including three thousand yards of calico and several 

 hundred pounds of beads. This last blow crushed the spirits of 

 the brave old man, for he was now reduced almost to beggaiy. 

 But there was still sunshine behind the clouds, relief and joy 

 were near at hand. He must tell in his own language the happi- 

 ness which sprung up when hope was dying, the delightful turn 

 of fortune's wheel which infused the old-time courage and high 

 resolve into his heart again. He writes : 



"But when my spirits were at their lowest ebb the good 

 Samaritan was close at hand, for one morning Susi [his faithful 



