332 
AFRICA AND ITS EXPLORATION. 
stant exercise makes them so strong and muscular that a 
Masarwa straight from the Kalahari Bushveldt, and 
another having undergone his training with the Matabele, 
could not be recognized as belonging to the same tribe. 
The Matabele warriors live in barracks, and domestic life 
is quite unknown; only in very exceptional cases is it 
allowable for any one but a chief to treat his wife other¬ 
wise than as a slave, though it must be allowed that 
there is hardly any appreciable difference between the 
two conditions. The king does not prevent people of 
other tribes from practising their own religious and 
superstitious ceremonies, subject to the general prohibi¬ 
tion that no subject of his may be a Christian. The 
ivory-traders followed the missionaries into the country ; 
they found a ready sale for guns and ammunition, but 
the natives were little disposed to purchase any articles 
of clothing. 
Here is a humorous incident, which might have 
ended in tragedy, that occurred in Tati, on the south¬ 
ward of Matabele-land. 
Before closing my notes about Tati, I cannot help 
mentioning an incident that occurred in Pit Jacobs’ 
house, in February, 1876. Jacobs himself, with two of 
his sons and his elder daughter, had gone on a hunting 
excursion to South Matabele-land, leaving his wife, his 
younger daughter, just now married to Mr. Brown, his 
two little boys, and a Masarwa servant in the house. 
The house was what is locally known asa“ kartebeest ” 
building, its four walls consisting of laths plastered over 
with red brick earth, and covered in with a gabled roof 
made of rafters thatched with grass. Inside, of the 
same material as the walls, was a partition dividing the 
house into two apartments, of which the larger was the 
living room, and the other the sleeping-chamber of the 
family. In the larger room, amongst other furniture, 
stood a sewing-machine that Mr. Brown had just bought 
as a present for his intended wife ; in the other room, 
opposite the door, were two beds. On this particular 
evening, the door of the house, which was made in two 
parts, had the upper division open ; the window in front 
