126 
LOVE OF CHILDBEN. 
Chap. VI. 
Tlie Boers assert that they are the best of masters, and that, if the 
Enghsh had possessed the Hottentot slaves, they would have 
received much worse treatment than they did: what that would 
have been it is difficult to imagine. I took down the names of 
some scores of boys and girls, many of whom I knew as our 
scholars; but I could not comfort the weeping mothers by any 
hope of their ever returning from slavery. 
The Bechuanas are universally much attached to childi’en. A 
little child toddling near a party of men while they are eating is 
sure to get a handful of the food. This love of children may arise, 
in a great measure, from the patriarchal system under wliich they 
dwell. Every little stranger forms an increase of property to 
the whole community, and is duly reported to the chief—boys 
being more welcome than girls. The parents take the name of 
the child, and often address their children as Ma (mother), or Ea 
(father). Our eldest boy being named Eobert, Mrs. Livingstone 
was, after his birth, always addressed as Ma-Eobert, instead of 
Mary, her Clmistian name, 
I have examined several cases in which a grandmother has taken 
upon herself to suckle a grandchild. Masina of Euruman had no 
children after the birth of her daughter Sina, and had no milk 
after Sina was weaned, an event which usually is deferred till the 
cliild is two or tlmee years old. Sina married when she was seven¬ 
teen or eighteen, and had twins; Masina, after at least fifteen 
years’ interval since she last suckled a cliild, took possession of one 
of them, apphed it to her breast, and milk flowed, so that she 
was able to nurse the child entirely. Masina was at this time at 
least forty years of age. I have witnessed several other cases 
analogous to this. A grandmother of forty, or even less, for 
they become withered at an early age, when left at home with a 
young child, apphes it to her own slirivelled breast, and milk soon 
follows. In some cases, as that of Ma-bogosing, the cliief wife -of 
^failure, who was about thirty-five years of age, the cliild w^as not 
entirely dependent on the grandmother’s breast, as the mother 
suckled it too. I had witnessed the production of milk so frequently 
by the simple application of the bps of the child, that I was not 
therefore surprised when told by the Portuguese in Eastern Africa 
of a native doctor who, by applying a poultice of the pounded 
larvae of hornets to the breast of a woman, aided by the attempts 
