V 
72 Central Africa. 
men and women, is very scanty, consisting of a belt of 
cloth around the loins, and monkey or other skins. The 
houses are of the ordinary beehive shape, and the villages 
contain from fifty to five hundred of these houses. Each 
village has its own chief, who rules there with supreme 
authority. They have the power of life and death over 
I their people ; and generally use barbarous sentences for 
little crimes. One missionary saw the remains of two 
women still hanging from the tree to which they had been 
tied up by their feet, and slowly roasted alive over a fire. 
Their offence was stealing. A person accused of witchcraft 
would be beheaded. The girls marry when very young, to 
men old enough to be their fathers. The boys amuse them- 
selves with fishing, or dancing, or shooting with bows and 
arrows. Each household keeps two sets of kitchen utensils 
for cooking and fetching water, one for the females, the 
other for the males of the family, who must, in all cases, be 
considered first. When water or cooking is required, one of 
the chiefs wives is appointed to perform the duty, in strict 
silence, and custom does not permit her to speak until the 
task is ended. When the cooking is finished, the wife 
places the meal in one part of the chief's house kept sacred 
for this purpose. When the chief has finished eating, he 
calls to his wife, who waits patiently outside for the call. 
She then goes in, clears away the dinner-mat, and comes 
out to make her own dinner ; her silence being over until 
cooking-time returns again. They practise tattooing, and 
sniff up tobacco-water into the nostrils, in place of smoking 
it in European fashion. In the case of the meeting of two 
friends, one would clap his hands twice, while the other 
would lay his hand on his breast. In saluting a chief, a 
native would stoop very low, pick up some dust, rub it first 
on one arm, then on another, and lastly on his breast. 
