my way back I saw several homesteads already finished, and close beside them some rude, conical huts of grass and reeds, so slightly put together that they could have taken only a few hours to construct. They were intended for the female slaves, and were not allowed to have any enclosure, so that the ingress and egress of their occupants might be under supervision.
Going into a hut next day I found a Mambari doing blacksmiths’ work with some tools that Masangu had lent him; he was sharpening mattocks, and kept his fire alive by means of a pair of the bellows that are in ordinary use among the Marutse. These bellows were somewhat peculiar, and may claim a detailed description. They had two compartments, formed of circular boards covered with leather, and with an aperture in the sides; these were alternately raised and lowered by handles, the air being forced into two wooden tubes that ran parallel to each other into the two compartments; fixed into the ends of the wooden tubes were two shorter tubes made of antelopes’ horns, but these, instead of running parallel, converged in front, and met in a clay nozzle, which was applied to the fire.
I was taking an afternoon stroll along the riverside, when I saw a crowd of natives manifestly in great excitement; it appeared that the body of a girl, who had been killed by a crocodile a few days before, had just been washed ashore. Crocodiles have the habit of drowning human beings, or any animals that they are unable to swallow, by holding them down at the bottom of the water until the cessation of all struggling seems to make them aware that no resistance is to be expected,
