THE SULTAN AND SULTANA. 
85 
in their living. The lady of my house, seated on a 
wooden stool in the open yard, had always some guests 
to dine with her, generally women of her own age and 
some little children, and never by any chance did her 
husband, the sultan, eat with her on these occasions. 
The food — some boiled sweet potatoes — would be 
brought on a wooden tray, and placed on the ground 
by a servant-maid, who knelt on one knee, or a bowl 
full of pombe would be presented in the same way. 
The sultan had seven wives. Each had her own 
separate house and establishment, which he visited 
daily, though at night he always slept in a place not 
much larger than himself, surrounded by charms and 
lions' paws. He lived almost entirely upon pombe, 
drinking it three or four times during the day, com- 
mencing as early as seven o'clock, and ending the day, 
if he was not already stupefied, by having it at supper- 
time. He was a very hale, healthy-looking old man, 
apparently about seventy, and most active in his habits. 
Different houses in his village held daily " receptions " 
for him, when he presided, and he was the first to 
taste the bowl of beer. The female population drank 
separately, and were presided over by the sultana. 
The liquor took five days of preparation: the grain 
(sorghum) had to be cleaned, ground, soaked, boiled, 
generally with cow -dung as firewood, allowed to cool, 
and was drunk, without filtration, in a fermenting 
state, out of bowls neatly made of grass by the women. 
With honey added it was tolerable, but without it the 
beverage was coarse and heady to a stranger. Our 
men were constantly tipsy; but the natives who fed 
upon it had a healthy appearance, and rarely became 
drunk. Their active early habits conduced to this result, 
