280 THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



ployment which, working the hands and leaving the 

 rest of the body and the mind at ease, is ever a favourite 

 with the Asiatic and the African ; they whittle wood, 

 pierce and wire their pipe-sticks — an art in which all 

 are adepts — shave one another's heads, pluck out their 

 beards, eyebrows, and eyelashes, and prepare and polish 

 their weapons. 



At about 1 p.m. the African, unless otherwise em- 

 ployed, returns to his hut to eat the most substantial 

 and the last meal of the day, which has been cooked by 

 his women. Eminently gregarious, however, he often 

 prefers the Iwanza as a dining-room, where his male 

 children, relatives, and friends meet during the most 

 important hour of the twenty-four. With the savage 

 and the barbarian food is the all-in-all of life : — food is 

 his thought by day, — food is his dream by night. The 

 civilised European, who never knows hunger or thirst 

 without the instant means of gratifying every whim of 

 appetite, can hardly conceive the extent to which his 

 wild brother's soul is swayed by stomach ; he can 

 scarcely comprehend the state of mental absorption in 

 which the ravenous human animal broods over the car- 

 case of an old goat, the delight which he takes in 

 superintending every part of the cooking process, and 

 the jealous eye with which he regards all who live better 

 than himself. 



The principal articles of diet are fish and flesh, grain 

 and vegetables ; the luxuries are milk and butter, honey, 

 and a few fruits, as bananas and Guinea-palm dates ; 

 and the inebrients are pombe or millet-beer, toddy, and 

 mawa or plantain-wine. 



Fish is found in the lakes and in the many rivers of 

 this well-watered land ; it is despised by those who can 

 afford flesh, but it is a " godsend" to travellers, to 



