wife can return to her father by refunding the
dowry, or she can be sent home by her husband,
who then has a right to receive half his dowry
back. Polygamy is the rule, and children are
wealth. Both sons and daughters cook for the
house, the daughters more than the sons; then
daughters become also saleable as wives, and
sons are fellow combatants, besides being
supporters of their parents in old age.

The negroes of Central Africa give up their
minds to the influence of their magicians, or
M'ganga, who may hinder the movements of a
traveller at their discretion, by prophesying
calamities if he set eyes upon the soil of any
region. They divine with a cow's or antelope's
horn, called Uganga, stuffed with a magic powder.
Such a horn, when stuck in the ground
before a village, is said to ward off attacks of an
enemy, and, if held in the magician's hand, is
said to enable him to discover anything that is
stolen or lost. The people pay their magician
for sticks, stones, or mud, which he has doctored
for them. They believe that certain flowers
held in the hand will guide them to anything
lost; that good luck and warning come to them
in the voice of bird or beast. They build dwarf
huts in their fields, and lay grain on them for the
evil spirit; and their little churches for the
spirits they call also Uganga. More rarely,
when the magician has found by inspecting the
blood and bones of a fowl flayed for the purpose
that there will be war, a young child is flayed
and laid across a path where all the warriors
may step over it as they go forth to battle.
Usually, however, they are content to step over
a flayed goat. Another extreme form of
barbarous ceremonial is to lay a small child and a
fowl both alive on a grating of sticks over a jar
half full of water, cover them over with a second
jar, and steam them like potatoes for a certain
time. At the end of that time, if they be dead,
a proposed war must be deferred; if living, it
may at once be entered on.

In Africa, after leaving the low country by
the coast, one finds plenty of cows that yield
a little milk, from which butter is made; goats
also are common, but there are fewer sheep, and
those ill bred and lanky, with long fat tails. Fowls
abound, a few Muscovy ducks are imported,
also pigeons and cats. There are many small
dogs, and in some places a few donkeys. At the
proper season there is hunting of the wild
elephant, buffalo, giraffe, zebra, pigs, and
antelopes, or shooting with arrows at small birds,
and guinea-fowls. But with animal life and
vegetation at their command—if only they knew
how to command it, and had sufficient providence
and industry—the native tribes of Central
Africa frequently suffer from famine, and are
found eating dogs, cats, rats, porcupines, snakes,
lizards, tortoises, locusts, and wild ants: or, are
forced to seek the seeds of wild grapes, or to
pluck wild herbs, fruits, and roots. The traces
of the prowling restless elephant are common
in the woods, here and there lies a tree that it
has amused him to knock down, but he himself
is rarely seen. In every jungle there is the
rhinoceros. The buffalo delights in the dark
places where he can wallow in the mud, and
browse and drink at ease. That taste for a
mud-bath, the wild pig shares with him. The
hippopotamus is found wherever there is water
to float him. In all open forests and plains,
where the villages are not too frequent, and
the grass is not too long, are the giraffe, the
zebra, and the antelope. The lion, a sneakish
beast, is seldom heard, more rarely seen.
Thievish hyænas abound; leopards, less common,
are the terror of the villagers. Foxes are not
numerous, but the native traveller is often
terrified by their ill-omened bark. Porcupines,
although not numerous, are widely spread, and
so are hares, of about half the size of English
hares. There are no rabbits. Squirrels and
monkeys keep out of sight among the trees.
Tortoises and snakes, and huge and little snails in
great variety, crawl about after the rains. Lizards
abound. Wild cats and animals of the ferret
kind destroy the small game, of which guinea-fowl
is the most abundant. Partridges are common,
but quails rare, and there are very many little
birds where there is water. There are few mice,
but many rats feed in the fields, and on the
stores of men. In open plains are the ostrich,
and the bustard, and the florikan. Ducks and
snipe do not like Africa; geese and storks are
found only where there is most water. There
are few vultures, but many hawks and crows.

It was chiefly by help of the men freed from
slavery, or the Wanguana, who worked for them
as hired servants, that Captains Speke and
Grant were enabled to assure their discovery of
the true source of the Nile. The Wanguana
are born Africans, who usually, after having
been caught in wars and sold to the Arabs for
cloth beads or brass wire, have been taken to
the Zanzibar market, and resold like horses to
the highest bidder, then kept in bondage by
their new master, circumcised as Mussulmans,
fed, clothed, and kindly treated. After a time,
when a sufficiently strong tie of mutual interest
and regard has been established, such
slaves are commonly trusted far away in the
interior to buy for their master, slaves and
ivory. By Mahometan law, at his master's
death a slave is free, but in Zanzibar he is
usually willed to the next heir. The slaves at
Zanzibar are physically stronger and more
numerous than the Arabs who hold them, but
they accept their position without question, and
even think it would be dishonest to run away
from a man who has bought them in the usual
course of trade. When freed, at his master's
death, the slave in Zanzibar takes service in some
vessel: an employment he likes, and from which
he looks down on other Africans as savages; or he
will serve some other merchant as a porter, and
when he has saved money enough begins a trade
of his own in slaves—the commodity most easily
come by—and ivory. But the Wanguana are
spoilt children without consciences, arrived at
man's estate; they are strong, brave, frivolous,
and lazy lounging cheats.

In their talk these African tribes have a fixed