532 LIFE OF DAVID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



husband ; for when she saw him approaching, she invariably went out of the 

 way, and knelt down till he had passed. It was the time of year for plant- 

 ing and weeding the plantations, and the regular routine work of all the fami- 

 lies in the town was nearly as follows : — Between three and four o'clock in 

 the morning, when the howling of the hyenas and growling of the lions or 

 leopards told that they had spent the night fasting, the human sounds heard 

 were those of the good wives knocking off the red coals from the ends of the 

 sticks in the fire, and raising up a blaze to which young and old crowded for 

 warmth from the cold which at this time is the most intense of the twenty- 

 four hours. Some Psange smoker lights his pipe and makes the place ring 

 with his nasty screaming, stridulous coughing. Then the cock begins to crow 

 (about 4 a. m.), and the women call to each other to make ready to march. 



"They go off to their gardens in companies, and keep up a brisk, loud 

 conversation, with a view to frighten away any lion or buffalo that may not 

 have retired, and for this the human voice is believed to be efficacious. The 

 gardens, or plantations, are usually a couple of miles from the village. This 

 is often for the purpose of securing safety for the crops from their own goats 

 or cattle, but more frequently for the sake of the black loamy soil near the 

 banks of rivulets. This they prefer for maize and dura (holcus sorghum), while 

 for a small species of millet, called mileza, they select a patch in the forest, 

 which they manure by burning the branches of trees. The distance which 

 the good wives willingly go to get the soil best adapted for different plants 

 makes their arrival just about dawn. Fire has been brought home, and a 

 Uttle pot is set on with beans or pulse — something that requires long simmer- 

 ing — and the whole family begins to work at what seems to give them real 

 pleasure. The husband, who had marched in front of each little squad with 

 a spear and little axe over his shoulder, at once begins to cut off all the sprouts 

 on the stumps left in clearing the ground. All the bushes also fall to his share, 

 and all the branches of tall trees too hard to be cut down are filed round the 

 root, to be fired when dry. He must also cut branches to make a low fence 

 round the plantation, for few wild beasts like to cross over anything having 

 the appearance of human workmanship. The wart hog having a great weak- 

 ness for ground-nuts, otherwise called pig-nuts (Arackis hypogoea), must be cir- 

 cumvented by a series of pitfalls, or a deep ditch, and earthen dyke all round 

 the nut plot. The mother works away vigorously with her hoe, often adding 

 new patches of virgin land to that already under cultivation. The children 

 help by removing the weeds and grass which she has uprooted into heaps to 

 be dried and burned. They seemed to know and watch every plant in the 

 field. It is all their own; no one is stinted as to the land he may cultivate; 

 the more they plant, the more they have to eat and to spare. In some parts 

 of Africa the labour falls almost exclusively on the women, and the males 

 are represented as atrociously cruel to them. It was not so here ; nor is it 



