Savage Africa. 23 
and then caused their quivering bodies to be heaped up in 
a ghastly pile as a monument of his revengeful power. 
M'tesa has, however, shown himself amenable to Chris- 
tian influences. Stanley, while resident at his court, took 
pains to instruct him in the simple doctrines of the Chris- 
tian religion, with much apparent success. A flourishing 
mission has lately been established among his people by the 
Church Missionary Society. It is to be hoped that he and 
his people will in time realize the benefits of their new faith. 
Stanley says that M^tesa and his tribe had adopted Moham- 
medanism, as a matter of fashion, just before his arrival, but 
that the king decided to change that faith for the Christian, 
upon the earnest representations and instructions of the 
traveller. 
The personal habits of the natives are in most cases re- 
pulsive. Their ideas of beauty are quite different from ours. 
Among some of them, fat and size are regarded as beauti- 
ful ; among others, tattooing and cutting the flesh ; among 
yet other tribes the habit is practised of the wearing of rings, 
or pieces of wood called pelelh^ in the upper lip, so causing 
the lip to project frightfully, like a duck's bill. Dirt and 
deformity appear to command respect with them, so per- 
verted are all their ideas of taste. The pelele is a round 
piece of wood inserted in the upper lip when the child is 
young, and exchanged, as he grows older, for larger pieces. 
This frightful ornament causes the lip to extend like a ring 
of flesh around the pelele^ and to fall over the teeth and 
lower lip down to the chin. These peleles are looked upon 
much in the same light as marriage-rings in England, and 
as jealously guarded. Simple loin-cloths, or fringes, with 
rings round the arms and ankles, form the staple dress 
of most of the tribes. Yet the head-dresses are sometimes 
intricate and massive, having beads^ wigs, and other things 
