IDOLS. 



31 



savages probably derived their Kisukas from some 

 civilized race. According to Andrew Battel, of 

 Leigh, the English captive at Angola (a.d. 1589), 

 the Jagas, or Giagas,^ did not worship, but had 

 small images in their towns, and a life-sized figure 

 of a man called Quesango. As a rule, however, 

 especially in the non-maritime regions, the negro's 

 want of constructiveness and of plastic power 

 prevent his being an idolater in the literal sense 

 of the word : he finds it more convenient to make 

 a god of 'grass or palm-leaves and broken pieces 

 of calabashes, to which feathers of foAvls are fast- 

 ened by means of blood.' ^ 



^ The racial name of these wandering Lestrigons, so for- 

 midable to the Portuguese in the 16th century, and taken 

 from a title of honour, ' Captains of warlike nomades,' is thus 

 confused by Prichard (Natural History of Man) : ' In 1569 

 the same people are said to have been completely routed on 

 the Eastern coast, near Mombasa, after having laid waste the 

 whole region of Monomotapa.' He may have heard of the 

 Highland of Chaga, whose people, however, call themselves 

 not Wachaga, but "VVakirima — • mountaineers. Or he may 

 have knowQ that the Portuguese inscription over the Fort 

 Gate at Mombasah declares that in a.d. 1635 the Capitao 

 Mor, Prancisco de Xeixas e Cabrera, had subjugated, amongst 

 others, the King of Jaca or Jaga. Jaca is also mentioned by J. 

 de Earros (ii. 1, 2). M. Guillain (vol. ii. chap, xxii.) makes 

 ' Chaka' a town between Melinde and the mouth of the Ozi 

 river. "We find ' the Jages, Anthropophagos,' in Walker's Map, 

 No. 4, Universal Atlas, 1811. 



'•^ Messrs J. Schon and Samuel Crowther's Journals with the 

 Niger Expedition of 1841. London, 1842. 



