supply of water. One calabash is for the baby, who is brought outside, and carefully washed, squalling lustily as the cold douche is poured over him. If the mother is careful, his feet are examined for jiggers. This sand flea, brought from Brazils some twenty years ago, is a great pest. Burrowing into the feet often in the most tender parts, the insect swells until its eggs are mature, when the little cyst bursts, and they are set free. If they are not extracted the jiggers set up an inflammation, which may even terminate in mortification. It is very common to see one or two toes absent from this cause.
The preliminaries of the day being over, the women start for the farms. Taking with them in the great conical basket a hoe, a little food, and a small calabash of water, the baby is carried on the hip, or more often made to straddle its mother’s back, and tied on with a cloth dexterously fastened in front. So the poor child travels often through the hot sun, bound tightly to its mother’s reeking body, its little head but inadequately protected by its incipient wool. No wonder that an African baby who has survived the hardships of babyhood grows up to be strong, and able to bear great strain and fatigue. The weaklings are early weeded out, and often poor mothers, wringing their hands, wail and deplore the loss of the little darling, whose death is due to their own lack of care, rather than to the supposed witchcraft and devilish malice of some one in the town.
The men will sometimes help in the farms when trees have to be felled, but otherwise the women perform the farm work; and as the ground does not need much scratching to produce a crop, the hoeing and weeding afford them healthy employment, sufficient to keep them so far out of mischief. We have seen towns in the neighbourhood of Stanley Pool where the women do no farm work, living on the proceeds of their husband’s ivory trade; they gossip, smoke, sleep, and cook, or spend an hour or two in arranging the coiffure of their lord or of a companion. Laziness is not good for any folk, and where there is so little housework