98 



DRESS. 



liaye ceased to extract one or more of the lower 

 incisors — a custom whose object was probably 

 the facilitating of expectoration — and they now 

 rarely tattoo, saying, ' Why should we spoil our 

 bodies ? ' They have abandoned the decoration 

 to women, who raise the cutis with a long 

 sharp thorn, prick it with a knife-point, and wash 

 the wounds with red ochre and water. Abroad 

 the Mnyika carries his bow and long skin-quiver 

 full of reed arrows, tipped with iron or hard wood, 

 and poisoned by means of some bulbous root : his 

 shield is a flat strip of cowhide doubled or trebled. 

 He has also a spear, a knife at his waist for cut- 

 ting cocoa-nuts, a E^ungu or knobstick in his 

 girdle behind, and a long sword, half sheathed, 

 and sharpened near the point. He hangs round 

 his neck a gourd sneeze-mull, containing powder- 

 ed tobacco with fragrant herbs and dried plantain- 

 flower. On journeys he holds a long thin staff 

 surmounted by a little cross, which serves to 

 churn his blood and milk, a common article of 

 diet in East Africa — similarly, the Lapps bleed 

 their reindeer. He also slings to his back a 

 dwarf three-legged stool, cut out of a single block 

 of hard wood. In the ^ E-eise auf dem Weissen 

 Nil ' (p. 32), extracted from the Vicar-General 

 Knoblecher's Journals, we read of the chief 



