JANUARY 6TH, 1856. Each village we passed furnished us with a couple of men to take us on to the next. They were useful in showing us the parts least covered with jungle. When we came near a village, we saw men, women, and children employed in weeding their gardens, they being great agriculturists. Most of the men are muscular, and have large plowman hands. Their color is the same admixture, from very dark to light olive, that we saw in Londa. Though all have thick lips and flat noses, only the more degraded of the population possess the ugly negro physiognomy. They mark themselves by a line of little raised cicatrices, each of which is a quarter of an inch long; they extend from the tip of the nose to the root of the hair on the forehead. It is remarkable that I never met with an Albino in crossing Africa, though, from accounts published by the Portuguese, I was led to expect that they were held in favor as doctors by certain chiefs. I saw several in the south: one at Kuruman is a full-grown woman, and a man having this peculiarity of skin was met with in the colony. Their bodies are always blistered on exposure to the sun, as the skin is more tender than that of the blacks. The Kuruman woman lived some time at Kolobeng, and generally had on her bosom and shoulders the remains of large blisters. She was most anxious to be made black, but nitrate of silver, taken internally, did not produce its usual effect. During the time I resided at Mabotsa, a woman came to the station with a fine boy, an Albino. The father had ordered her to throw him away, but she clung to her offspring for many years. He was remarkably intelligent for his age. The pupil of the eye was of a pink color, and the eye itself was unsteady in vision. The hair, or rather wool, was yellow, and the features were those common among the Bechuanas. After I left the place the mother is said to have become tired of living apart from the father, who refused to have her while she retained the son. She took him out one day, and killed him close to the village of Mabotsa, and nothing was done to her by the authorities. From having met with no Albinos in Londa, I suspect they are there also put to death. We saw one dwarf only in Londa, and brands on him showed he had once been a slave; and there is one dwarf woman at Linyanti. The general absence of deformed persons is partly owing to their destruction in infancy, and partly to the mode of life being a natural one, so far as ventilation and food are concerned. They use but few unwholesome mixtures as condiments, and, though their undress exposes them to the vicissitudes of the temperature, it does not harbor vomites. It was observed that, when smallpox and measles visited the country, they were most severe on the half-castes who were clothed. In several tribes, a child which is said to "tlola", transgress, is put to death. "Tlolo", or transgression, is ascribed to several curious cases. A child who cut the upper front teeth before the under was always put to death among the Bakaa, and, I believe, also among the Bakwains. In some tribes, a case of twins renders one of them liable to death; and an ox, which, while lying in the pen, beats the ground with its tail, is treated in the same way. It is thought to be calling death to visit the tribe. When I was coming through Londa, my men carried a great number of fowls, of a larger breed than any they had at home. If one crowed before midnight, it had been guilty of "tlolo", and was killed. The men often carried them sitting on their guns, and, if one began to crow in a forest, the owner would give it a beating, by way of teaching it not to be guilty of crowing at unseasonable hours.
The women here are in the habit of piercing the upper lip, and gradually enlarging the orifice until they can insert a shell. The lip then appears drawn out beyond the perpendicular of the nose, and gives them a most ungainly aspect. Sekwebu remarked, "These women want to make their mouths like those of ducks;" and, indeed, it does appear as if they had the idea that female beauty of lip had been attained by the 'Ornithorhynchus paradoxus' alone. This custom prevails throughout the country of the Maravi, and no one could see it without confessing that fashion had never led women to a freak more mad. We had rains now every day, and considerable cloudiness, but the sun often burst through with scorching intensity. All call out against it then, saying, "O the sun! that is rain again." It was worth noticing that my companions never complained of the heat while on the highlands, but when we descended into the lowlands of Angola, and here also, they began to fret on account of it. I myself felt an oppressive steaminess in the atmosphere which I had not experienced on the higher lands.