238 
TRAVELS m AFRICA. Chap. XLV. 
the French call cafe au lait, while this woman was of 
a red complexion. She certainly wore in her under 
lip the large bone, the national emblem of the Miisgu 
females ; but this custom she might have adopted. As 
for herself, she would neither give me any informa- 
tion with respect to her origin, nor sit still in order 
to allow me to finish my sketch. She was tall and 
well-grown, with the exception of the legs, which 
were rather crooked; and being still a young woman, 
her breasts had not yet attained that bag-like shape 
which is so disgusting in the elder females of this 
country. Her features were only a little disfigured 
by the bone in the under lip. Her neck was richly 
ornamented with strings of beads ; but these were as 
little peculiar to her as the cotton cloth round her 
loins, having been given her by the new master into 
whose hands she had fallen. The national dress of 
the Miisgu females consists of nothing but a narrow 
bandage, formed of bast, twisted like a rope, which 
is fastened between the legs and round the waist like 
a T bandage. 
A circumstance happened here which caused a 
great sensation, particularly among the courtiers. 
The last messengers who had been sent from Ku- 
kawa with despatches for the commander-in-chief, as 
I have observed, had been destroyed by the pagans ; 
and it was on this day, and in this place, that, while 
all the cottages were being pillaged and ransacked, 
three of the letters of which those messengers had 
been the bearers, were found in the pocket of a shirt 
