NURTURE OF CHILDREN. 
333 
leave this cannibal race, they were told, " No, you are 
our food, and must not leave us but one shot dis- 
persed them, and they escaped being eaten ! He 
further added that they were not a nude race, neither 
did they keep cattle, but they wore the skins of goats. 
A knife which he had brought from Koshee, three 
marches to the west, was formed of one piece of iron, 
and had a round spoon as the handle to its dagger- 
like blade. He probably exaggerated, when he said 
that the people gouged eyes with it. When a 
birth took place in the Toorkee camp, drums were 
beaten violently from break of day ; and women as- 
sembled to rejoice at the door of the mother, by clap- 
ping their hands, dancing, and shouting. Their dance 
consisted in jumping in the air, throwing out their 
legs in the most uncouth manner, and flapping their 
sides with their elbows. One would have supposed 
the whole to be drunk, but it was their mode of con- 
gratulation. When the mother sufficiently recovers, 
a goat is killed, and she is asked to step over its 
body, and return again by stepping over its throat ; 
this operation is repeated. Mothers nurse and tend 
their children with the greatest care, washing them 
daily with warm water, and licking their faces dry as 
a dog would her litter of puppies. After this, the 
body is smeared with a vermilion-coloured pomade, 
and the infant is laid upon its back on the skin of a 
goat, which forms its cradle. The four corners of the 
skin are then knotted together, and the child is sung 
to sleep while slung in the hand or over the shoulder. 
When the mother is otherwise busy, the tender burden 
is hung upon a peg in the same way that we hang a 
cloak. A wife of the commandant's went through a 
