54 LIVINGSTONE'S LAST JOURNALS. [Chap. II. 



and seized ; he roared out, but the soko giggled and grinned, 

 and left him as if he had done it in play. A child caught 

 up by a soko is often abused by being pinched and scratched, 

 and let fall. 



The soko kills the leopard occasionally, by seizing both 

 paws, and biting them so as to disable them, he then goes up 

 a tree, groans over his wounds, and sometimes recovers, while 

 the leopard dies : at other times, both soko and leopard die. 

 The lion kills him at once, and sometimes tears his limbs 

 off, but does not eat him. The soko eats no flesh — small 

 bananas are his dainties, but not maize. His food consists 

 of wild fruits, which abound : one, Stafene, or Manyuema 

 Mamwa, is like large sweet sop but indifferent in taste and 

 flesh. The soko brings forth at times twins. A very large 

 soko was seen by Mohamad's hunters sitting picking his 

 nails ; they tried to stalk him, but he vanished. Some 

 Manyuema think that their buried dead rise as sokos, and 

 one was killed with holes in his ears, as if he had been a 

 man. He is very strong and fears guns but not spears : 

 he never catches women. 



Sokos collect together, and make a drumming noise, some 

 say with hollow trees, then burst forth into loud yells which 

 are well imitated by the natives' embryotic music. If a 

 man has no spear the soko goes away satisfied, but if 

 wounded he seizes the wrist, lops off the fingers, and spits 

 them out, slaps the cheeks of his victim, and bites without 

 breaking the skin : he draws out a spear (but never uses 

 it), and takes some leaves and stuffs them into his wound 

 to staimch the blood ; he does not wish an encounter with 

 an armed man. He sees women do him no harm, and 

 never molests them; a man without a spear is nearly safe 

 from him. They beat hollow trees as drums with hands, and 

 then scream as music to it ; when men hear them, they 

 go to the sokos ; but sokos never go to men with hostility. 

 Manyuema say, " Soko is a man, and nothing bad in him." 



