MANYEMA CANNIBALS. 499 



■when the effect of musket-ball was shown on a goat, they looked up to the 

 clouds, and offered to bring ivory to buy the charm by which lightning was 

 drawn down. When a village was assaulted, the men fled in terror, and 

 women and children were captured. 



"Many of the Manyema women, especially far down the Lualaba, are 

 very light-coloured and lovely : it was common to hear the Zanzibar slaves — 

 whose faces resembled the features of London door-knockers, which some 

 atrocious ironfounder thought were like those of lions — say to each other, 

 ' Oh, if we had Manyema wives, what pretty children we should get ! ' 

 Manyema men and women are vastly superior to the slaves, who evidently 

 felt the inferiority they had acquired through wallowing in the mire of 

 bondage. Many of the men were tall strapping fellows, with but little of 

 what we think distinctive of the negro about them. If one relied on the 

 teachings of phrenology, the Manyema men would take a high place in the 

 human family. They felt their superiority, and often said truly, ' Were it 

 not for fire-arms, not one of the strangers would ever leave our country.' If 

 a comparison were instituted, and Manyema taken at random, placed oppo- 

 site, say, the members of the Anthropological Society of London, clad like 

 them in kilts of grass cloth, I should Hke to take my place alongside the 

 Manyema, on the principle of preferring the company of my betters ; the 

 philosophers would look wofully scraggy. But though the ' inferior race,' as 

 we compassionately call them, have finely-formed heads, and often handsome 

 features, they are undoubtedly cannibals. 



" It was more difficult to ascertain this than may be imagined. Some 

 think that they can detect the gnawings of the canine teeth of our cannibal 

 ancestry on fossil bones, though the canine teeth of dogs are pretty much 

 like the human." 



Dr. Livingstone found it difficult to pick up genuine information as to 

 the man-eating propensities of the Manyema. " This arose," he says, " partly 

 from the fellows being fond of a joke, and they liked to horrify any one who 

 seemed incredulous. They led one of my people, who believed all they said, 

 to see the skull of a recent human victim, and he invited me in triumph. I 

 found it to be the skull of the gorilla, here called soko, and for the first time 

 I became aware of the existence of the animal there." Speaking of the soko, 

 he says : — " I cannot admire him. He is sometimes seen in the forest, walk- 

 ing upright, with his hands on his head, as if to steady his loins; but on sight 

 of man, he takes to all-fours. He is not handsome : a bandy-legged, pot- 

 bellied, low-browed villain, without a particle of the gentleman in him ; but 

 he has a good character from the natives." 



" The country abounds in food of all kinds, and the rich soil raises 

 everything in great luxuriance. A friend of mine tried rice, and in between 

 three and four months it yielded between one hundred-and-twenty fold. 



