358 GAME WEAPONS — EARTHENWARE OF MADI. 
The country was too open and populous for game. 
Along our route we saw none ; but the men often 
wore ornaments of the wild boar's curved tusk. This 
was tied with a thong above each elbow, and looked 
very jaunty on their well-formed arms. Their spears 
were some inches taller than most men can stretch, 
with handles of bamboo and handsomely-shaped iron 
blades. Each was shod with a sharp point of iron, or 
had its end like the leaded end of an Indian hog- 
spear. Their iron weapons were of superior construc- 
tion, and were chiefly made on the spot, as there were 
traces of smelting. The earthenware was very ordin- 
ary; but we remarked an unusual article of luxury, 
a strainer actually of earthenware — the only civilised 
bit of crockery we had seen since leaving Zanzibar : 
it was chiefly used for straining beer. The perennial 
cotton -bush grew 8 feet high, without irrigation, close 
to the houses ; the pods, thick and numerous, were 
now ripening. Three or four bushes give sufficient 
cotton to each family for all the use made of it ; the 
women dye it brown, and make their scanty dress — 
waist-belts and tails — of the fibre. The men practised 
archery a good deal, placing a number of the large 
seed-vessels of Kigelia pinnata on end and aiming 
at them at 40 and 50 yards' distance. They must 
be practised shots, as a villager was brought us in a 
sinking state with an arrow-mark in his side. The 
wound was covered up, and plastered all over with 
leaves — their remedy for everything. He had, in all 
probability, been struck by a poisoned arrow, as they 
sometimes use these in Madi. 
We had very little sickness, and all were in high 
glee at the thought of going to Egypt in boats. Some 
