Moero is three days distant, and as Nsama's people go thither to collect salt on its banks, it would have been impossible for me to visit it from the south without being seen, and probably suffering loss.
The people seem to have no family names. A man takes the name of his mother, or should his father die he may assume that. Marriage is forbidden to the first, second, and third degrees: they call first and second cousins brothers and sisters.
A woman, after cupping her child's temples for sore eyes, threw the blood over the roof of her hut as a charm.
[In the above process a goat's horn is used with a small hole in the pointed end. The base is applied to the part from which the blood is to be withdrawn, and the operator, with a small piece of chewed india-rubber in his mouth, exhausts the air, and at the proper moment plasters the small hole up with his tongue. When the cupping-horn is removed, some cuts are made with a small knife, and it is again applied. As a rough appliance, it is a very good one, and in great repute everywhere.]
FOOTNOTES:
[50] It subsequently proved to be the southern extremity of this great Lake.
[51] Elais, sp.(?).
[52] This is a common symptom—men will suddenly lose all power in the lower extremities, and remain helpless where they fall.—ED.
[53] The men heard in 1873 that he had been killed.
[54] This comes near to the custom of throwing rice after the bride and bridegroom in England.—ED.