declared that it was Nyambe’s will that the crocodile should seize her, and therefore the crocodile must be allowed to have her. The body was accordingly left to be devoured at sunset.
Queen Lunga took an opportunity of calling upon me, to introduce her daughter Nyama. She was a girl of fourteen, and had just been married to Sepopo’s eldest son, Monalula, who was half an idiot. Before the wedding she had been sent to reside with her mother and some other of the royal wives in a retired hut in a neighbouring wood, where she was made to fast, and to spend her time in working and in learning her domestic duties; her hair meanwhile had been all shaved off, except an oval patch that was rubbed with manganese. Nyama’s father was Sekeletu, the Makololo prince.
In one of my next rambles through the woods, I came upon a little Mankoë settlement. The people were perhaps the finest men in the Marutse empire. They had long, woolly hair, which they combed up high, giving their heads the effect of being larger than they really were. Their purpose in coming to Sesheke was to assist the king in his projected great hunting-excursion. I noticed that their travelling-utensils of horn and wood were ornamented with carvings scarcely inferior in execution to those of the Mabundas. The four huts in which they were residing were about seven feet in height, and the same in width, and were arranged in the shape of a horseshoe. On my way back I saw several graves of Masupia chieftains, all adorned with ivory; I likewise noticed some calabashes, with sticks thrust right through them, resting mouth downwards on a small ant-hill, and filled with pulverized
