Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/40

22 SOUTH AND EAST AFRICA. The Bundas, and especially the Nanos or Highlanders, are generally fine men with proud bearing and frank expression. Amongst them persons are often found with blue eyes, a trait which is not at all appreciated by the natives. In most of the tribes the women are tattooed with designs representing flowers and arabesques. They go bare-headed, whereas the men fold a sort of turban round their hair, or else part it into a multitude of ringlets decked with little clay balls in imitation of coral. Like those of most other African tribes, the Bunda solas, or chiefs, add to their usual dress the skin of a panther or of some other rapacious beast, this spoil of the chase baing regarded as an emblem of the terror by which royalty should ever be surrounded. Some of the tribes practise circumcision, a rite unknown in others, or reserved for the chiefs alone, who submit to the operation before assimiing the panther's skin. The Bundas are for the most part highly intelligent, under the direction of Europeans rapidly acquiring a knowledge of letters, writing, and music. In a few months they learn to speak Portuguese correctly, and also make excellent artisans. Each community has its blacksmith and armourer, its carpenter, weaver, potter, all of whom assist at the public gatherings, according to a w*5ll established order of precedence. But the Bundas distinguish themselves above all as traders. All the business affairs of the Portuguese with the interior are transacted by them, and they not unfrequently excel their teachers in com- mercial ability. The Bundas of the inland plateaux, whom Livingstone speaks of under the collective name of ^lambari, accompany the traders' carai^ans far into the interior of the continent. Owing to their long journeys through the bush country, they are also commoaly known as Pombeiros, from the native word pombe, answering to our scrub or brushwood. Some of these caravans at one time comprised as many as three thousand persons, and were occasionally transformed to bands oi" armed marauders. Many of these inland Bundas were in the habit of sending their children to the coast towns for the purpose of receiving a European education. The Bunda territory is divided- into a number of chieftaincies, some of which comprise a considerable population ; but each village constitutes an independent community in the enjoyment of self-government in all matters of purely local interest. The citizens, however, do not take part in the deliberations on a footing of equality, for there are numerous privileged classes, some by hereditary right, others through the royal favour, while over one-half of the whole popula- tion are enslaved. The slave element is supplied by captives in war, by distress compelling freemen to sell themselves and families, and by debts which are often paid by the loss of liberty. The expenses of funeral banquets have even at times been liquidated by selling the very children of the deceased. On the other hand, nearly all the slaves marrj'^ free Avomen, in order thus to lighten the burden of servitude and to ensure the emancipation of their children, who always take the social position of their mothers. When a slave becomes in this way related to a chief, his life is considered as of equal value to that of a free man. His body, like that of other Bundas, is consulted by the wizards, in order to ascertain whether