534 LIFE OF DA VII) LIVINGSTONE, LL.R 



blowers, stockingers, fustian-cutters, brick-makers, etc., in England. At 

 other periods of the year, when harvest is home, they enjoy more leisure 

 and jollification with their native beer called 'pombe.' But in no case of free 

 people, living in their own free land under their own free laws, are they like 

 what slaves become. 



"When the grain is dry, it is pounded in a large wooden mortar. To 

 separate the scales from the seed, a dexterous toss of the hand drives all the 

 chaff to one corner of the vessel. This is lifted out, and then the dust is 

 tossed out by another peculiar up-and-down half-horizontal motion of the 

 upper millstone, to which the whole weight is applied, and at each stroke the 

 flour is shoved off the farther end of the nether millstone, and the flour is 

 finished. They have meat but seldom, and make relishes from the porridge 

 into which the flour is cooked, of the leaves of certain wild and cultivated 

 plants ; or they roast some ground nuts, grind them fine, and make a curry. 

 They seem to know that oily matter, such as the nuts contain, is requisite to 

 modify their otherwise farinaceous food, and some even grind a handful of 

 castor-oil nuts with the grain for the same purpose. The husband having 

 employed himself in the afternoon in making mats for sleeping on, in pre- 

 paring skins for clothing, or in making new handles for hoes, or cutting out 

 wooden bowls, joins the family in the evening, and all partake abundantly 

 of the chief meal of the day before going off to sleep. They have consider- 

 able skill in agriculture, and great shrewdness in selecting the sorts proper 

 for different kinds of produce. When Bishop Mackenzie witnessed their 

 operations in the field, he said to me, 'When I was in England and spoke in 

 public meetings about our mission, I mentioned that I meant to teach them 

 agriculture ; but now I see that the Africans know a great deal more than I 

 do.' One of his associates, desiring to benefit the people to whom he was 

 going, took lessons in basket-making before he left England ; but the speci- 

 mens of native workmanship he met with everywhere led him to conclude 

 that he had better say nothing about his acquisition — in fact, he could 'not 

 hold a candle to them.' The foregoing is a fair example of the every-day life 

 of the majority of the people in Central Africa It as truly represents sur- 

 face life in African villages as the other case does the surface condition in 

 an Arab harem. In other parts the people appear to travellers in much worse 

 light. The tribes lying more towards the east coast, who have been much 

 visited by Arab slaves, are said to be in a state of chronic warfare, the men 

 always ready to rob and plunder, and the women scarcely ever cultivating 

 enough of food for the year. That is the condition to which all Arab slavery 

 tends. Captain Speke revealed a state of savagism and brutality in Uganda 

 of which I have no experience. The murdering by wholesale of the chief 

 Mteza, or Mtesa, would not be tolerated among the tribes I have visited. 

 The slaughter of headmen's daughters would elsewhere than in Uganda 



