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Moreover, these beads were said to have been plundered from white men by the Wakidi, a stark-naked people who live up in trees have small stools fixed on behind, always ready for sitting wear their hair hanging down as far as the rump, all covered with cowrie-shells suspend beads from wire attached to their ears and their lower lips and wear strong iron collars and bracelets.
Upon these vessels white men have been seen. All the cowrie-shells used in Latooka and the neighbouring countries are supplied by these vessels, but none have arrived for the last two years. "His description of distance places Magungo on about the 2 degrees N. lat.
On 18th July, the natives held a great consultation, and ended with a war-dance; they were all painted in various patterns, with red ochre and white pipe-clay; their heads adorned with very tasteful ornaments of cowrie-shells, surmounted by plumes of ostrich-feathers, which drooped over the back of the neck.
Lastly, he performed the tambura, or charging-march, in imitation of Wakugnu, repeating the same words they use, and ending by a demand for simbi, or cowrie-shells, modestly saying, "I am a beggar, and want simbi; if you have not 500 to spare, you must at any rate give me 400." He then narrated his fortune in life.
Its breadth was such that, if one journeyed two days east and the same distance west, there was no land visible on either quarter, while to the south its direction was utterly unknown. Large vessels arrived at Magungo from distant arid unknown parts, bringing cowrie-shells and beads in exchange for ivory. Upon these vessels white men had been seen.
She looked at him humorously, expecting to see a smile, or at least a grin, on his face. Instead, his face was expressionless. Save for a narrow breech-clout, a pair of ear-plugs, and about his kinky hair a chaplet of white cowrie-shells, he was naked. His body was fresh-oiled and shiny, and his eyes glistened in the starlight like some wild animal's.
I was now asked to draw nearer within the hollow square of squatters, where leopard-skins were strewed upon the ground, and a large copper kettledrum, surmounted with brass bells on arching wires, along with two other smaller drums covered with cowrie-shells, and beads of colour worked into patterns, were placed.
We passed two small hamlets surrounded by gardens of maize and manioc, and near each of these I observed, for the first time, an ugly idol common in Londa the figure of an animal, resembling an alligator, made of clay. It is formed of grass, plastered over with soft clay; two cowrie-shells are inserted as eyes, and numbers of the bristles from the tail of an elephant are stuck in about the neck.
They are no wiser than the savages, who hide and hoard their little heaps of cowrie-shells. They might as well have filled their treasuries with flint-stones or scraps of iron. They muster their wealth merely to become its slave. They are rich not because they possess imagination, but because they lack it. Their bank-books are the index of their folly.
No helmet is supposed to be complete without a row of cowrie-shells stitched around the rim so as to form a solid edge. Although the men devote so much attention to their head-dress, the woman's is extremely simple. It is a curious fact that while the men are remarkably handsome the women are exceedingly plain.
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