XXXI 
SOME PECULIAR FOODS 
277 
opinion, been somewhat overrated, and cannot 
compare with either the feet or trunk. The 
natives have a method of drying elephant and 
other kinds of meat by exposing the flesh to the 
sun during the day and smoking it over a fire at 
night, after which treatment, it will keep in a 
satisfactory condition for a considerable length of 
time. When it is in this preserved state, the 
natives will eat it without further cooking, but 
though I have read of certain African tribes eating 
raw meat, this custom does not obtain among any 
of the numerous tribes with whom I have come in 
contact. 
Of other kinds of game, young buffalo, inswala, 
eland, reedbuck and bushbuck are the most tooth¬ 
some. The flesh of the rhinoceros is excellent, 
being of a very fine texture, considering the 
enormous size of the beast ; while hippopotamus 
meat makes an ideal curry, as the fat and lean are 
so nicely in proportion. 
Among their various foods, the natives have one 
which they consider a special delicacy, although 
I am afraid it would hardly appeal to a civilized 
palate. This is a maggot, some three inches in 
length, which they call the maungo, and which bores 
into and lives in the decaying trunks of the mungo, 
incunia and tumbie-tumbie trees. It is a perfectly 
white mass of fat, and I have often seen a native 
