iv.] MORAL CONDITION. 129 



Tattooing is universally practised among these tribes : 

 drunkenness prevails to a great extent in Angola, and is 

 not unknown in the interior. 



Mr Moffat, in the account of his visit to Moselekatse, 

 chief of the Matebele, thus graphically describes one of that 

 monarch's feasts : " The bloody bowl was the portion of 

 those who could count the tens they had slain in the day of 

 battle. One evening two men bore towards me an enormous 

 basket. It was the royal dish sent from the presence of his 

 majesty. The contents, smoking blood, apparently as liquid 

 as if it had just come from the arteries of the ox, and mixed 

 with sausages of suet. I acknowledged the honour he 

 wished to confer, but begged to be excused so lordly a dish, 

 as I never ate blood when I could get anything else. This 

 refusal gave perfect satisfaction, when the whole breast of 

 an ox, well stewed, was immediately sent in its place. As 

 nothing can be returned, the bearers of the smoking pre- 

 sent, and others who were standing round it, had scarcely 

 heard that they might do what they pleased with it, when 

 they rushed upon it, scooping it up with their hands, mak- 

 ing a noise equal to a dozen hungry hogs around a well- 

 filled trough 1 ." 



The Mambari and some other tribes, eat the most dis- 

 gusting food, such as mice, moles, &c. 



Respecting the Makololo, Dr Livingstone gives the fol- 

 lowing account of their moral state: "They do not attempt 

 to hide the evil, as men often do, from their spiritual in- 

 structors; but I have found it difficult to come to a con- 

 clusion on their character. They sometimes perform actions 

 remarkably good, and sometimes as strangely the opposite. 

 I have been unable to ascertain the motive for the good, or 

 account for the callousness of conscience with which they 

 perpetrate the bad. After long observation, I came to the 

 conclusion that they are just such a strange mixture of good 

 1 Missionary Labours, &c. p. 553. 



