140 LOVE OF CHILDREN. 



The Boers assert that they are the best of masters, and that, if the 

 English had possessed the Hottentot slaves, they would have re- 

 ceived much worse treatment than they did : what that would 

 have been it is difficult to imagine. I took down the names of 

 some scores of boys and girls, many of whom I knew as our schol- 

 ars ; but I could not comfort the weeping mothers by any hope of 

 their ever returning from slavery. 



The Bechuanas are universally much attached to children. A 

 little child toddling near a parfy of men while they are eating is 

 sure to get a handful of the food. This love of children may 

 arise, in a great measure, from the patriarchal system under which 

 they dwell. Every little stranger forms an increase of property 

 to the whole community, and is duly reported to the chief — boys 

 being more welcome than girls. The parents take the name of 

 the child, and often address their children as Ma (mother), or Ra 

 (father). Our eldest boy being named Robert, Mrs. Livingstone 

 was, after his birth, always addressed as Ma-Robert, instead of 

 Mary, her Christian name. 



I have examined several cases in which a grandmother has 

 taken upon herself to suckle a grandchild. Masina of Kuruman 

 had no children after the birth of her daughter Sina, and had no 

 milk after Sina was weaned, an event which usually is deferred 

 till the child is two or three years old. Sina married when she 

 was seventeen or eighteen, and had twins ; Masina, after at least 

 fifteen years' interval since she had suckled a child, took posses- 

 sion of one of them, applied it to her breast, and milk flowed, so 

 that she was able to nurse the child entirely. Masina was at this 

 time at least forty years of age. I have witnessed several other 

 cases analogous to this. A grandmother of forty, or even less, for 

 they become withered at an early age, when left at home with a 

 young child, applies it to her own shriveled breast, and milk soon 

 follows. In some cases, as that of Ma-bogosing, the chief wife of 

 Manure, who was about thirty-five years of age, the child was not 

 entirely dependent on the grandmother's breast, as the mother suck- 

 led it too. I had witnessed the production of milk so frequently 

 by the simple application of the lips of the child, that I was not 

 therefore surprised when told by the Portuguese in Eastern Africa 

 of a native doctor who, by applying a poultice of the pounded 

 larva? of hornets to the breast of a woman, aided by the attempts 



