892 LIFE OF DA VID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



with rancid butter to make it smooth, and they lie on it without any skin or 

 cloth under them. The Mundombes generally wear their hair in a large 

 woolly bush, but the young men and women cut it into a variety of strange 

 forms and patterns. Their arms are knobbed sticks, often fancifully carved, 

 small axes, bows and arrows, and spears, generally much ornamented with 

 beads. They are expert hunters, and the abundance of large game supplies 

 them with more animal food than other tribes of Angola. They are a hard, 

 wiry race, capable of undergoing great fatigue and hunger, and a very good 

 trait in their character is that they are good-natured and merry. They are 

 not a bad race, but are wild, roving and intractable to teaching or civilisation. 

 Not one of them can be induced to work beyond carrying loads or a hammock, 

 which latter they have also a unique way of doing. Supposing eight to be 

 carrying a white man in a hammock, three will range themselves and run 

 along on each side; at a loud clap of their hands, one Mundombe from the 

 right will shove his shoulders under the pole behind the carrier in front, who 

 passes to the left. Another on the left does the same with the carrier behind, 

 who passes to the right, and so they go changing round and round every few 

 yards, and running along all the time without stopping a moment." 



Among the plants growing around Benguela, one of the principal is the 

 shrubby jasmine, which grows in large clumps, covered with white blossoms; 

 and early in the morning, the air is so impregnated with the scent as to give 

 those who pass through the bush for any distance a headache. Jackals and 

 hyenas abound in the locality; on dark nights especially the hyenas perambu- 

 late all over the town in search of bones and offal of every description, fight- 

 ing and making a terrible noise. Zebras are abundant in the rocky districts of 

 the country about Benguela and Mossambes; and their bray is peculiar, being 

 like that of the donkey, without the long drawn notes made during inspiration. 



A large dog-faced monkey inhabits these rocky districts, going about in 

 troops of from twelve to twenty. When feeding, they have always two or 

 more of their number perched on the high rocks as sentinels, and on the least 

 sign of danger, they utter a hoarse grunt, and all take to flight, the young 

 ones tightly clasping their mother's backs. If a sentinel fail in his duty, the 

 others set upon him, and worry him as a punishment. They live on the roots 

 and fruits of trees, and on several species of large onion-looking bulbs. 



The natives on this part of the coast make a kind of boat or raft, out of 

 the bimba tree, which it is impossible to sink. The wood is soft, and as light 

 as pith ; the peeled stems are skewered together in two or three layers, with 

 sides about a foot and a half to two feet high, and the ends finished off in a 

 point, the whole looking like a punt built of three logs. The water rushes 

 in and out everywhere, people get washed over and wetted through by the 

 surf ; but the boat never upsets or sinks, and floats like a dry cork. 



The district of Dombe Grande is situated about twenty-four miles to the 



