fashions in beads and cloths, like our ladies at home,
and before visiting a fresh kraal our men used to
love to polish themselves like mahogany, by chewing
the monkey-nut and rubbing their skins with it,
good-naturedly doing each other’s backs and inaccessible
corners. Somehow they know what becomes
ANCIENT EGYPTIAN PILLOW IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM
them too, twisting tin ornaments, made from our
meat tins, into their black hair. Just now they will
have nothing but red beads with white eyes, which
they thread into necklaces and various ornaments,
and which look uncommonly well on their dark skins ;
and though it seems somewhat paradoxical to say so
of naked savages, yet I consider no one has better
taste in dress than they have until a hybrid civilisation
is introduced amongst them.
Prom many of the huts at Inyamanda were hang-
WOODEN DOLLASSES OB DIVINING TABLETS
ing their dollasses—wooden charms, on which are
drawn strange figures. Each family possesses a set
of four tied together by a string. Of these four one
always has a curious conventional form of a lizard
BONE DOLLASSES
carved on it ; others have battle axes, diamond patterns,
and so forth, invariably repeating themselves, and the
purport of which I was never able to ascertain. They
are common amongst ah the Abantu races, and