8G4 AN ALBINO MURDERED BY HIS MOTHER. 



between the ranges of hills which flank the Zambesi, the 

 rains felt warm. At sunrise the thermometer stood at from 

 82° to 86° ; at mid-day in the coolest shade, namely, in my 

 little tent under a shady tree, at 96° to 98° ; and at sunset 

 it is 86°. This is different from anj^ thing we experienced 

 in the interior; for these rains always bring down the mer- 

 cury to 72° or even 68°. There, too, we found a small, 

 black coleopterous insect, which stung like the mosquito 

 but injected less poison : it puts us in mind of that insect, 

 which does not exist in the high lands we had left. 



January 6, 1856. — Each village we passed furnished us 

 with a couple of men to take us on to the next. They 

 were useful in showing us the parts least covered with 

 jungle. When we came near a village, we saw men, 

 women, and children employed in weeding their gardens, 

 they being great agriculturists. Most of the men are 

 muscular, and have large ploughman-hands. Their color 

 is the same admixture — from very dark to light olive — 

 that we saw in Londa. Though all have thick lips and 

 flat noses, only the more degraded of the population pos- 

 sess the ugly negro physiognomy. They mark themselves 

 by a line of little raised cicatrices, each of which is a quar- 

 ter of an inch long : they extend from the tip of the nose 

 to the root of the hair on the forehead. It is remarkable 

 that I never met with an albino in crossing Africa, 

 though, from accounts published by the Portuguese, I was 

 led to expect that they were held in favor as doctors by 

 certain chiefs. I saw several in the south : one at Kuru- 

 man is a full-grown woman, and a man having this pecu- 

 liarity of skin was met with in the colony. Their bodies 

 are always blistered on exposure to the sun, as the skin 

 is more tender than that of the blacks. The Kuruman 

 woman lived some time at Kolobeng, and generally had on 

 her bosom and shoulders the remains of large blisters. 

 She was most anxious to be made black; but nitrate of 

 silver, taken internally, did not produce its usual effect. 

 During the time I resided at Mabotsa, a woman came ** 



