126 LOVE OF CHILDREN. Chap. VI. 



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

 English had possessed the Hottentot slaves, they would have 

 received 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 

 scholars ; 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 cliild toddling near a party 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 then cliildren 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 tliree years old. Sina married when she was seven- 

 teen or eighteen, and had twins ; Masina, after at least fifteen 

 years' interval since she last suckled a child, took possession of one 

 of them, applied it to her breast, and milk flowed, so that she 

 Mas 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 shrivelled 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 

 suckled 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 

 larvae of hornets to the breast of a woman, aided by the attempts 



