Dinka Goat.
DINKA DOG.
The dogs closely resemble the common village curs of Nubia, a cross between the greyhound of the Nubian steppes and the pariah of the streets of Cairo. It is not unusual for their colour to be brown, but by far the larger number are a tawny yellow.
Every idea and thought of the Dinka is how to acquire and maintain cattle: a kind of reverence would seem to be paid to them; even their offal is considered of high importance; the dung, which is burnt to ashes for sleeping in and for smearing their persons, and the urine, which is used for washing and as a substitute for salt, are their daily requisites. It must be owned that it is hard to reconcile this latter usage with our ideas of cleanliness. A cow is never slaughtered, but when sick it is segregated from the rest, and carefully tended in the large huts built for the purpose. Only those that die naturally or by an accident are used as food. All this, which exists amongst most of the pastoral tribes of Africa, may perchance appear to be a lingering remnant of an exploded cattle-worship; but I may draw attention to the fact that the Dinka are by no means disinclined to partake of any feast of their flesh, provided that the slaughtered animal was not their own property. It is thus more the delight of actual possession, than any superstitious estimate, that makes the cow to them an object of reverence. Indescribable is the grief when either death or rapine has robbed a Dinka of his cattle. He is prepared to redeem their loss by the heaviest sacrifices, for they are dearer to him than wife or child. A dead cow is not, however, wantonly buried; the negro is not sentimental enough for that; such an occurrence is soon bruited abroad, and the neighbours institute a carousal, which is quite an epoch in their monotonous life. The bereaved owner himself is, however, too much afflicted at the loss to be able to touch a morsel of the carcase of his departed beast. Not unfrequently in their sorrow the Dinka remain for days silent and abstracted, as though their trouble were too heavy for them to bear.
The only domestic animal which is slaughtered amongst them is the goat, which scarcely represents the thirtieth part of the value of a cow. A heifer has three times the value, and a cow that has calved double the value of a steer. In common with the other tribes of this part of Africa they use rather a singular method of butchering their cattle, proceeding, whenever it is practicable, by the way of making a violent stab in the nape of the neck by means of a spear. This causes immediate death, and is a method which gives but little trouble.
DEGENERATION OF CATTLE.
It is not difficult to understand how people like the Dinka should make their whole delight to centre in having thriving cattle-farms, but to us their profitless practice of emasculation must remain incomprehensible. The herdsmen cut their bulls and bucks with the mere intention of feasting their eyes upon a development of fat which is always obnoxious to the stomach. Almost the third part of their bulls are submitted to the knife, and the same proportion of their goats and rams, and even their dogs, with the design of rendering them more agile, more, enduring, and fitter for the chase; this also being the reason why their ears and tails are clipped. Ask the Dinka what good they get from their possessions of oxen, and they have ever the answer ready that it is quite enough if they get fat and look nice. Such is the way in which they express their satisfaction and their pride.
The failure of the beard amongst the male cattle so treated is a topic that suggests some observations. In spite of the anxiety and care which the Dinka bestow upon their herds, there is no mistake about the degeneration of the race. The way in which I chiefly account for this is that there is not enough crossing of breeds—in fact, that there is almost a total exclusion of any strange stock. I should say that hardly one in a hundred of the beasts is capable of either bearing a burden or going a journey, a purpose, however, to which none of the negroes of the Upper Nile ever seem to put them. But nothing is more remarkable than the entire absence of fat which characterises them; a single pound of fat could not be obtained from a whole ox; and not only does this deficiency extend to the parts that are ordinarily plump and fleshy, but the spinal marrow itself is so utterly dry that in a stewpan it runs off like white of egg, without depositing a particle of grease. Eye-witnesses have assured me that Miss Tinné, during her residence here, although she had whole herds at her command, could never get her supply of pomade replenished.
Again the cattle of the Dinka are not provided with salt in any form whatever, which may in a measure account for the degenerating; it may explain the prevalence, all but universal, of the worms known as “kyatt,” which cover the first stomach or paunch, of nearly all their cattle. These worms in Europe are included in the genus of the Amphistoma; they are like an oval bag, something under half an inch long, and generally as red as port wine.