206 NOTES ON THE MONBUTTU. 



chiefs are expected to appear before them from time to time, 

 when they bring with them presents of girls, cattle, eggs, bark 

 cloth, &c. During the time of their residence at the court, 

 the sovereign is bound to find them in food, which accounts 

 for the great crowd of servants, and especially wives, belonging 

 to each chief, for upon them devolves the cultivation of the 

 fields. 



Three meals daily are taken in Monbuttu, the hut of each 

 wife furnishing the chief with one dish, contained in a wooden 

 bowl, and floating in palm-oil, the chief himself distributing 

 the food with his own hands. A chief may not eat in public, 

 but takes his meals in the hut of his favourite wife, who waits 

 upon him, and all that is left after he is satisfied, and has given 

 some to his wife, is buried. As there are hardly any cattle in 

 the country, the meals consist chiefly of vegetables, which 

 nature supplies in great variety. The menu includes roots of 

 all kinds — yams, manioc, of which only the sweet variety grows 

 here (the poisonous kind is common in the A-Zande country), 

 Helmia, sweet potatoes, sesame, a little eleusine (no durrah, and 

 still less Penicillaria, for which, indeed, there is no word), 

 gourds of various kinds, Colocasias, and a great variety of 

 fruits, but the staple food is always and everywhere the 

 banana, both fresh and dried. If we add to the above game 

 of various kinds, including even monkeys' flesh (but not the 

 flesh of lions, elephants, or snakes), as also fowls and eggs, all 

 kinds of birds, and, as tit-bits, the fat larvas of insects, the cuisine 

 cannot be said to be badly supplied, especially as human flesh 

 has to be added to the bill of fare. 



It is a lamentable fact that the practice of cannibalism, 

 though concealed in the neighbourhood of the stations, is at 

 the present day just as widespread as when the Arabs invaded 

 the country, and that hardly any one is buried, and corpses 

 are bartered as before. Men who abstain from human flesh 

 are the exception, just as with the A-Zande, and chiefs like 

 Wando and Yaugara owe part of their reputation among their 

 countrymen to this circumstance. Neither do, the Akka despise 

 human flesh ; of this I have repeatedly had proof. 



Tobacco, beer, and cola-nuts are the only narcotics or in- 

 toxicants with which I became acquainted. The tobacco {tdbba, 



