LANGUAGES OF THE AT LIMA - NJA R 0 DISTRICT. 487 
cultivated plants, very few were known to them in 
the days before their dispersal, perhaps only millet, 
pumpkins, edible arums, the banana, and a few obscure 
roots and fruits. 
They seem to have been acquainted with the use of 
iron and copper, used smelting-forges of the primitive 
type still in vogue, and beat out knives, spears, and 
arrow-heads as they do now. The bow was certainly 
in common use, and its name is not only well-nigh 
universal throughout Bantu Africa, but also seems to 
have sprung from a very old root. Pottery, basket¬ 
weaving, and some form of clothing, either of plaited 
grass, banana-fibre, or imported cloth, was in use. 
Oanoes were familiar to the early Bantu people, to 
judge by the universality of their primitive name. 
A conception of a Supreme Being or Creator seems to 
have existed, but a belief in spirits of the dead, in 
magic, witchcraft, certain vague forms of u fetishism,’ 5 
and phallic worship certainly prevailed, and the 
u medicine-man,” “ rain-maker,” or magician most 
undoubtedly exercised as powerful a sway over the 
primitive Bantu as he does throughout every branch 
of his widespread descendants. 
Apparently in that golden age before their dispersal 
the Bantu people were neither acquainted with small¬ 
pox, syphilis, nor many forms of disease which plague 
them nowadays. They smoked hemp, possibly, but 
not tobacco, and they drank one or two kinds of 
fermented liquors. They anointed themselves with 
oil, rancid butter, red earth, and the dyes of certain 
trees. They sang and they danced, and they possessed 
drums and musical instruments with strings. 
Circumcision is not universal among all Bantu 
nations at the present day, and it is possible that it 
