RAVAGE CUSTOMS OF BATOKA. 335 



with four or five wives and very few people. At his hamlet 

 a number of stakes are planted in the ground, and I counted 

 fifty-four human skulls hung on their points. These were 

 Matebele, who, unable to approach Sebituane on the island 

 of Loyela, had returned sick and famishing. Moyara's 

 father took advantage of their reduced condition, and, after 

 putting them to death, mounted their heads in the Batoka 

 fashion. The old man who perpetrated this deed now lies 

 in the middle of his son's huts, with a lot of rotten ivory 

 over his grave. One cannot help feeling thankful that the 

 reign of such wretches is over. They inhabited the whole 

 of this side of the country, and were probably the barrier to 

 the extension of the Portuguese commerce in this direction. 

 When looking at these skulls, I remarked to Moyara that 

 many of them were those of mere boys. He assented 

 readily, and pointed them out as such. I asked why his 

 father had killed boys. " To show his fierceness," was the 

 answer. "Is it fierceness to kill boys?" "Yes : they had 

 no business here." When I told him that this would pro- 

 bably insure his own death if the Matebele came again, he 

 replied, "When I hear of their coming I shall hide the 

 bones." He was evidently proud of these trophies of 

 his father's ferocity; and I was assured by other Batoka 

 that few strangers ever returned from a visit to this quar- 

 ter. If a man wished to curry favor with a Batoka chief, 

 he ascertained when a stranger was about to leave, and 

 waylaid him at a distance from the town, and when he 

 brought his head back to the chief it was mounted as a 

 trophy, the different chiefs vieing with each other as to 

 which should mount the greatest number of skulls in his 

 village. 



Next day we came to Namilanga, or " The Well of Joy." 

 It is a small well dug beneath a very large fig-tree, the 

 shade of which renders the water delightfully cool. The 

 temperature through the day was 104° in the shade and 94° 

 after sunset, but the air was not at all oppressive. This 

 well receives its name from the fact that, in former tunes, 



