JOURNEY FROM KATUNGA TO BOUSSA. 
85 
since I had been in this country than ever I had done in my life ; 
that in England we eat nothing but fowls, beef, and mutton. 
The women here are marked on the body somewhat in the 
manner of the lace on a hussar’s jacket : in some, where the skin 
has not healed properly, it looks very disgusting. 
The widow Zuma has been kind enough to send me provisions 
ready cooked, in great abundance, ever since I have been here. Now 
that she has failed with Richard, she has offered Pascoe a handsome 
female slave for a wife, if he could manage to bring about matters 
with me. Not being much afraid of myself, and wishing to see 
the interior arrangement of her house, I went and visited her. 
I found her house large, and full of male and female slaves ; the 
males lying about the outer huts, the females more in the interior. 
In the centre of the huts was a square one of large dimensions 
surrounded by a verandah, with screens of matting all around ex- 
cept in one place, where there was hung a tanned bullock's hide ; 
to this spot I was led up, and, on its being drawn on one side, 1 
saw the lady sitting cross-legged on a small Turkey carpet, like one 
of our hearth rugs, a large leather cushion under her left knee; 
her goora pot, which was a large old-fashioned English pewter 
mug, by her side, and a calibash of water to wash her mouth out, 
as she alternately kept eating goora and chewing tobacco-snuff; 
the custom with all ranks, male or female, who can procure them : 
on her right side lay a whip. At a little distance, squatted on the 
ground, sat a dwarfish hump-backed female slave, with a wide mouth 
but good eyes : she had on no clothing, if I except a profusion of 
strings of beads and coral round her neck and waist. This personage 
served the purpose of a bell in our country, and what, I suppose, 
would in old times have been called a page. The lady herself was 
dressed in a white coarse muslin turban ; her neck profusely de- 
corated with necklaces of coral and gold chains, amongst which was 
one of rubies and gold beads ; her eyebrows and eyelashes blacked, 
her hair dyed with indigo, and her hands and feet with henna ; 
