G24 "ten human jawbones." 



the half-exhausted wordy combatants. To me it was an amus- 

 ing scene. I could not understand the words that flowed off 

 their glib tongues, but the gestures were too expressive to need 

 interpretation. " One man, a stranger in the market, was 

 noticed, who had ten human jawbones hung by a string over 

 his shoulder, and he seemed almost boastful of having killed 

 and eaten the original owners of them, and exhibited with his 

 knife his method of dissecting men with a painful coolness, and 

 only laughed with the rest when Dr. Livingstone expressed his 

 disgust. 



Sometimes parties belonging to Dugumbe's horde tried to deal 

 in the market in a lordly way, as inferior men are wont to do 

 when they imagine themselves surrounded by weaker ones. 

 But there can hardly be found a class of people on earth who 

 are readier to assert their rights against domineering assumptions 

 than those very modest individuals who rejoice in being known 

 as market women. When those impertinent fellows came about 

 with their " I will buy that," and " These are mine, nobody 

 must touch that but me," and the like, the women quickly 

 taught them that they could monopolize nothing, but deal fairly 

 like other people. 



The doctor had ample opportunity to observe the people of 

 the district, and the more he saw of them the more he was per- 

 plexed by the strange contradictions their characters revealed. 

 Cannibals they certainly were, thinking no more of the life of 

 a man than the blossom of a flower ; as ready to kill a man as to 

 kill a pig; yet honest, fine-looking, sometimes really beautiful ! 



Every day their country was becoming more and more the 

 scene of confusion and bloodshed. Villages were being burned 

 and people massacred continually. They seemed to distinguish 

 him from the Arabs and their underlings, but he knew that 

 there could be no reliance placed in them, for contrasting with 

 their honesty in dealing was absolute untruthfulness in other 

 matters. They had no conscience against framing any sort of 

 lie by which they might get the pleasure of spilling blood. 



As time passed, the hopes of getting a canoe or men were no 

 nearer realization. The traders themselves, seizing on his idea, 

 had fallen on the plan of proceeding in canoes. Reports came 

 of immense quantities of ivory in possession of the Babisa, 



