THE NURSING OF CHILDREN. 115 



years old. Sina married when she was seventeen or 

 eighteen, and had twins ; Masina, after at least fifteen 

 years' interval since she last suckled a child, took posses- 

 sion of one of them, applied it to her breast, and milk 

 flowed, so that she was able to nurse the child entirely. 

 Masina was at this time at least forty years of age. I 

 have witnessed several other cases analogous to this. 

 A grandmother of forty, or even less, for they become 

 withered at an early age, when left at home with a young 

 child, applies it to her own shrivelled breast, and milk 

 soon follows. In some cases, as that of Ma-bogosing, 

 the chief wife of Manure, who was about thirty-five years 

 of age, the child was not entirely dependent on the grand- 

 mother's breast, as the mother suckled it too. I had 

 witnessed the production of milk so frequently by the 

 simple application of the lips of the child, that I was not 

 therefore surprised when told by the Portuguese in Eastern 

 Africa of a native doctor who, by applying a poultice of 

 the pounded larvae of hornets to the breast of a woman, 

 aided by the attempts of the child, could bring back the 

 milk. Is it not possible that the story in the ' Cloud of 

 Witnesses,' of a man during the time of persecution in 

 Scotland putting his child to his own breast, and finding,. 

 to the astonishment of the whole country, that milk fol- 

 lowed the act, may have been literally true ? It was 

 regarded and is quoted as a miracle ; but the feelings of 

 the father towards the child of a murdered mother must 

 have been as nearly as possible analogous to the maternal 

 feeling ; and, as anatomists declare the structure of both 

 male and female breasts to be identical, there is nothing 

 physically impossible in the alleged result. The illus- 

 trious Baron Humboldt quotes an instance of the male 

 breast yielding milk ; and though I am not conscious of 

 being over credulous, the strange instances I have ex- 

 amined in the opposite sex make me believe that there 

 is no error in that philosopher's statement. 



The Boers know from experience that adult captives 

 may as well be left alone, for escape is so easy in a wild 

 country that no fugitive slave-law can come into opera- 

 tion ; they therefore adopt the system of seizing only the 

 youngest children, in order that these may forget their 

 parents and remain in perpetual bondage. I have seen 

 mere infants in their houses repeatedly : this fact was 

 formerly denied ; and the only thing which was wanting 



