[Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa by David Livingstone]@TWC D-Link book
Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa

CHAPTER 4
13/41

It was such an inimitably natural way of showing off, that we all stopped to admire the acting, and, though he had left us previously in the lurch, we all liked Shobo, a fine specimen of that wonderful people, the Bushmen.
Next day we came to a village of Banajoa, a tribe which extends far to the eastward.

They were living on the borders of a marsh in which the Mahabe terminates.

They had lost their crop of corn ('Holcus sorghum'), and now subsisted almost entirely on the root called "tsitla", a kind of aroidoea, which contains a very large quantity of sweet-tasted starch.
When dried, pounded into meal, and allowed to ferment, it forms a not unpleasant article of food.

The women shave all the hair off their heads, and seem darker than the Bechuanas.

Their huts were built on poles, and a fire is made beneath by night, in order that the smoke may drive away the mosquitoes, which abound on the Mababe and Tamunak'le more than in any other part of the country.


<<Back  Index  Next>>

D-Link book Top

TWC mobile books