500 LIFE OF DA VID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



. . . Maize is so abundant, that I have seen forty -five loads, each about 

 sixty lbs., given for a single goat. The ' Maize-dura,' or Sorghum, sweet 

 potatoes, and yams, flourished in no stinted measure, the farinaceous ingre- 

 dient of diet ; the palm-oil, the ground nuts, and a forest tree, afford the fatty 

 materials of food ; bananas and plantains, in great profusion, and the sugar- 

 cane, yield a substitute for sugar ; the palm toddy, beer of bananas, tobacco, 

 and bange, form the luxuries of life ; and the villages swarm with goats, sheep, 

 dogs, pigs, and fowls ; while the elephants, buffaloes, zebras, and gorillas, 

 yield to the expert hunter plenty of nitrogenous ingredients of human food. 

 It was puzzling to me why they should be cannibals. New Zealanders, we 

 are told, were cannibals because they had killed all the gigantic birds, and 

 they were converted from the man-eating persuasion by the introduction of 

 pigs. But the Manyema have plenty of pigs and other domestic animals, and 

 yet they are cannibals. They say that human flesh is not equal to that of 

 goats or pigs ; it is saltish, and makes them dream of the dead. Why fine- 

 looking men like them should be so low in the moral scale, can only be attri- 

 butable to the non-introduction of that religion which makes those distinc- 

 tions among men which phrenology and other ologies cannot explain. . . . 



" The Manyema women, especially far down the Lualaba, are very 

 pretty and very industrious. The market is, with them, a great institution, 

 and they work hard and carry far in order to have something to sell. Mar- 

 kets are established about ten or fifteen miles apart. There those who raise 

 cassava, maize, grain, and sweet potatoes, exchange them for oil, salt, pepper, 

 fish, and other relishes ; fowls, also pigs, goats, grass cloth, mats, and other 

 utensils, change hands. All are dressed in their best — gaudy-coloured, many- 

 folded kilts, that reach from the waist to the knee." As Livingstone already 

 told us, they all unite to enforce honest trading. He says that they are 

 such eager traders, "They set off in companies by night, and begin to run 

 as soon as they come within the hum arising from hundreds of voices. To 

 haggle, and joke, and laugh, and cheat, seems to be the dearest enjoyment 

 of their life. They confer great benefits upon each other. The Bayenza 

 women are expert divers for oysters, and they barter them and fish for farina- 

 ceous food with the women on the east of the Lualaba, who prefer cultivating 

 the soil to fishery. The Manyema have told us that women going to market 

 were never molested. When the men of two districts were engaged in actual 

 hostilities, the women passed through from one market to another unarmed ; 

 to take their goods even in war was a thing not to be done. 



" But at these market women the half-castes directed their guns. Two 

 cases that came under my own observation were so sickening, I cannot allow 

 the mind to dwell upon or write about them. Many of both sexes were 

 killed, but the women and children chiefly were made captives. No matter 

 how much ivory they obtained, these l Nigger Moslems ' must have slaves j 



