CHAP. VIII,] 
MAKKARIKA CANNIBALS. 
201 
west of Gondokoro. Both he and many of Ibrahim's 
party had been frequent witnesses to acts of canni¬ 
balism, during their residence among the Makkarikas. 
They described these cannibals as remarkably good 
people, but possessing a peculiar taste for dogs and 
human flesh. They accompanied the trading party in 
their razzias, and invariably ate the bodies of the 
slain. The traders complained that they were bad 
associates, as they insisted upon killing and eating 
the children which the party wished to secure as 
slaves : their custom was to catch a child by its ankles, 
and to dash its head against the ground; thus killed, 
they opened the abdomen, extracted the stomach 
and intestines, and tying the two ankles to the neck, 
they carried the body by slinging it over the shoulder, 
and thus returned to camp, where they divided it by 
quartering, and boiled it in a large pot. Another man 
in my own service had been a witness to a horrible act 
of cannibalism at Gondokoro. 
The traders had arrived with their ivory from the 
West, together with a great number of slaves; the 
porters who carried the ivory being Makkarikas. One 
of the slave girls attempted to escape, and her 
proprietor immediately fired at her with his musket, 
and she fell wounded; the ball had struck her in the 
side. The girl was remarkably fat, and from the 
wound, a large lump of yellow fat exuded. No sooner 
had she fallen, than the Makkarikas rushed upon her 
in a crowd, and seizing the fat, they tore it from the 
wound in handsful, the girl being still alive, while the 
crowd were quarrelling for the disgusting prize. Others 
killed her with a lance, and at once divided her by 
cutting off the head, and splitting the body with their 
lances, used as knives, cutting longitudinally from 
between the legs along the spine to the neck. 
Many slave women and their children who witnessed 
this scene, rushed'panic-stricken from the spot and 
took refuge in the trees. The Makkarikas seeing them 
in flight, were excited to give chase, and pulling the 
