PHENOMENON IN THE NUETUEE OF CHILDREN. 141 



of the child, could bring back the milk. Is it not possible that 

 the story in the " Cloud of Witnesses" of a man, during the time 

 of persecution in Scotland, putting his child to his own breast, 

 and finding, to the astonishment of the whole country, that milk 

 followed the act, may have been literally true ? It was regarded 

 and is quoted as a miracle ; but the feelings of the father toward 

 the child of a murdered mother must have been as nearly as pos- 

 sible analogous to the maternal feeling ; and, as anatomists de- 

 clare the structure of both male and female breasts to be identical, 

 there is nothing physically impossible in the alleged result. The 

 illustrious Baron Humboldt quotes an instance of the male breast 

 yielding milk ; and, though 1 am not conscious of being over-cred- 

 ulous, the strange instances I have examined in the opposite sex 

 make me believe that there is no error in that philosopher's state- 

 ment. 



The Boers know from experience that adult captives may as 

 well be left alone, for escape is so easy in a wild country that no 

 fugitive-slave-law can come into operation ; they therefore adopt 

 the system of seizing only the youngest children, in order that 

 these may forget their parents and remain in perpetual bondage. 

 I have seen mere infants in their houses repeatedly. This fact 

 was formerly denied ; and the only thing which was wanting to 

 make the previous denial of the practice of slavery and slave-hunt- 

 ing by the Transvaal Boers no longer necessary was the declara- 

 tion of their independence. 



In conversation with some of my friends here I learned that 

 Maleke, a chief of the Bakwains, who formerly lived on the hill Li- 

 tubaruba, had been killed by the bite of a mad dog. My curiosity 

 was strongly excited by this statement, as rabies is so rare in this 

 country. I never heard of another case, and could not satisfy my- 

 self that even this was real hydrophobia. While I was at Ma- 

 botsa, some dogs became affected by a disease which led them to 

 run about in an incoherent state ; but I doubt whether it was any 

 thing but an affection of the brain. No individual or animal got 

 the complaint by inoculation from the animals' teeth ; and from 

 all that I could hear, the prevailing idea of hydrophobia not exist- 

 ing within the tropics seems to be quite correct. 



The diseases known among the Bakwains are remarkably few. 

 There is no consumption nor scrofula, and insanity and hydro- 



