230 



THE HOMESTEAD. 



mon to Inner Africa from Harar to Tinbuktu. 

 Erameworks of concentric wattle-rings wrapped 

 round with plantain leaves are fastened to slender 

 upriglits planted in the ground, and the inside is 

 plastered over with fine mud. A low solid door 

 acts also as window, and the conical roof is sup- 

 ported by a single central tree; a fire-place of 

 stones distributes smoke as well as heat, and a 

 chimney would be held expensive and uncomfort- 

 able. In some homesteads the semi-circle oppo- 

 site the entrance is occupied by a raised plank 

 framework forming a family bedstead, and in a 

 few cases a kind of second half-story, like a mag- 

 nified bunk, is raised above it. 



The Wasumbara are abundantly leavened with 

 Semitic blood ; and they increase and multiply, to 

 judge from the lodges capping every hill, and 

 from the younglings who apparently form more 

 than the normal fifth. Yet the Arabs declare 

 that the women are not proHfic, six children being 

 a large family : this, if fact, must be attributed to 

 preventatives, abortion, and infanticide. The 

 snowy heads of the seniors show that there are still 

 in the land Macrobian J^thiopians, men who die of 

 sheer old age ; and what else can be expected from 

 human beings who have hardly an idea, except 

 the fear of sale, to impede digestion ? The males. 



