Tattooing is universally practised among these tribes: drunkenness prevails to a great extent in Angola, and is not unknown in the interior.

Mr Moffat, in the account of his visit to Mosilikatse, chief of the Matebele, thus graphically describes one of that monarch's feasts: "The bloody bowl was the portion of those who could count the tens they had slain in the day of battle. One evening two men bore towards me an enormous basket. It was the royal dish sent from the presence of his majesty. The contents, smoking blood, apparently as liquid as if it had just come from the arteries of the ox, and mixed with sausages of suet. I acknowledged the honour he wished to confer, but begged to be excused so lordly a dish, as I never ate blood when I could get anything else. This

gave perfect satisfaction, when the whole breast of an ox, well stewed, was immediately sent in its place. As nothing can be returned, the bearers of the smoking present, and others who were standing round it, had scarcely heard that they might do what they pleased with it, when they rushed upon it, scooping it up with their hands, making a noise equal to a dozen hungry hogs around a wellfilled trough'."

The Mambari and some other tribes eat the most disgusting food, such as mice, moles, &c.

Respecting the Makololo, Dr Livingstone gives the following account of their moral state: " They do not attempt to hide the evil, as men often do, from their spiritual instructors; but I have found it difficult to come to a conclusion on their character. They sometimes perform actions remarkably good, and sometimes as strangely the opposite. I have been unable to ascertain the motive for the good, or account for the callousness of conscience with which they perpetrate the bad. After long observation, I came to the conclusion that they are just such a strange mixture of good

1 Missionary Labours, &c. p. 553

and evil, as men are everywhere else'." He goes on to speak of the rich being kind to the poor in expectation of services; and of the sick poor being left to starve, and then to lie unburied.

In Mr Moffat's book there are more terrible

Their cruelty and want of pictures of native cruelty than in that of Dr natural affec- Livingstone.

tion.

In a battle between the Mantatees and the Bechuanas, witnessed by Mr Moffat, he tells us of the wounded warriors, and the women and children, of the former tribe, being killed by the men of the latter, in cold blood. On the one hand he saw the living babe in the arms of its dead mother, or the dead infant in those of its living mother: and, on the other hand, he beheld the mutilation of captives, together with mothers and children rolled in blood 2!

The following is a picture of Batlapi cruelty, practised against their Mantatee invaders: "The wounded enemy they baited with their stones, clubs, and spears, accompanied with yellings and countenances indicative of fiendish joy. The hapless women found no quarter, especially if they possessed anything like ornaments to tempt the cupidity of their plunderers. A few copper rings round the neck, from which it was difficult to take them, was the signal for the already uplifted battle-axe to sever the head from the trunk, or the arm from the body, when the plunderer would grasp with a smile his bleeding trophies. Others, in order to be able to return home with the triumph of victors, would pursue the screaming boy or girl, and not satisfied with severing a limb from the human frame, would exhibit their contempt for the victims of their cruel revenge, by seizing the head, and hurling it from them, or kicking it to a distance"."

1 Travels, p. 510.

2 Missionary Labours, &c. p. 361, &c. 3 Ibid. p. 369.

The march of these Mantatees for hundreds of miles might have been traced by human bones.

He met with the custom in Namaqua-land, of the parricide of parents by their children, when too old to do anything; leaving them to starve in the desert. He once fell in with a mother so abandoned'.

Of the cruelty practised by the Matebele against the Bakone tribes, the following eloquent account was given by one of the latter, to Mr Moffat, in answer to an inquiry about some ruins, which he saw scattered over a plain in the neighbourhood of the Mosilikatse's capital. The commencement of this native's speech states that he himself beheld the disaster-that this was the home of the chief of the blue-coloured cattle, whose people were numerous and brave-going on to say: "The noise of their song was hushed in night, and their hearts were filled with dismay. They saw the clouds ascend from the plains. It was the smoke of burning towns. The confusion of a whirlwind was in the heart of the great chief of the blue-coloured cattle. The shout was raised, 'They are friends;' but they shouted again, They are foes,' till their near approach proclaimed them naked Matebele. The men seized their arms, and rushed out, as if to chase the antelope. The onset was as the voice of lightning, and their spears as the shaking of a forest in the autumn storm. The Matebele lions raised the shout of death, and flew upon their victims. It was the shout of victory. Their hissing and hollow groans told their progress among the dead. A few moments laid hundreds on the ground. The clash of shields was the signal of triumph. Our people fled with their cattle to the top of yonder mount. The Matebele entered the town with the roar of the lion; they pillaged and fired the houses, speared the mothers, and cast their infants to the flames. The sun went down. The victors emerged from the smoking plain, 1 Missionary Labours, &c. p. 133.

and pursued their course, surrounding the base of yonder hill. They slaughtered cattle; they danced and sang till the dawn of day; they ascended, and killed till their hands were weary of the spear'."

In the following passage the missionary gives a terrible picture of Matebele warfare: "The Matabele were not satisfied with simply capturing cattle; nothing less than the entire subjugation or destruction of the vanquished could quench their insatiable thirst for power. Thus when they conquered a town, the terrified inhabitants were driven in a mass to the outskirts, when the parents and all the married women were slaughtered on the spot. Such as dared to be brave in the defence of their town, their wives and their children, are reserved for a still more terrible death; dry grass, saturated with fat, is tied round their naked bodies, and then set on fire. The youths and girls are loaded as beasts of burden with the spoils of the town, to be marched to the homes of their victors. If the town be in an isolated position, the helpless infants are either left to perish with hunger or to be devoured by beasts of prey. On such an event, the lions scent the slain and leave their lair. The hyenas and jackals emerge from their lurking-places in broad day, and revel in the carnage, while a cloud of vultures may be seen descending on the living and the dead, and holding a carnival on human flesh. Should a suspicion arise in the savage bosom that those helpless innocents may fall into the hands of friends, they will prevent this by collecting them into a fold, and after raising over them a pile of brushwood, apply the flaming torch to it, when the town, but lately the scene of mirth, becomes a heap of ashes?"

Among the Bushmen, if a mother dies, leaving an infant, this is often buried alive with her. Infanticide is common among these people.

1 Missionary Labours, &c. p. 528.

2 Ibid. p. 555

Dr Livingstone tells us of a Bechuana woman at Mabotsa, who murdered her Albino son, because her husband refused to live with her; she went unpunished by the authorities1.

He further informs us of a slave-girl being allowed to starve by her master, because his crop had failed: also of a boy being likewise left to the same fate2.

These statements are not made either from a morbid love of feasting on the terrible, or of painting the dark side of human nature; but to prove how necessary it is for the Gospel to be made known among such benighted people, in order that it may transform them in the spirit of their minds, and cause them truly to abandon such Satanic practices.

We know that heathenism has its bright side; and that heathen men and women oftentimes exhibit the noblest traits of character, as well as practise the kindliest of the virtues. But be it remembered that this is the exception, and not the rule. Conscience may sometimes work, and the soul may occasionally aspire after higher and better things. Kindness, affection, and even justice may sometimes govern for a time, but these do not affect the main current, which is corrupt and poisonous. Whatever may be the sins of omission and of commission of Christian lands, these, in the main, are not to be compared in frequency and enormity with those of heathen countries, in which the best side of the question is almost entirely wanting.

The present Religious State of the Natives of South Africa. "And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest."-Ezekiel xxxvii. 3.

"And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent."-Acts xvii. 30.

The best way in which to understand a person's need, is to know his state. We have just reviewed the cruelty of 2 Ibid. p. 511.

› Travels, p. 576.