“Kyatt” Worm.
The sheep and he-goats that are left are quite devoid of fat; their flesh when it is cooked has an odious soapy flavour, and is altogether more repulsive than the rankest roast antelope.
As an illustration of the degree to which the Dinka devote all their attention to cattle-breeding, and find their chief delight in it, it may be mentioned that the great amusement of the children is to mould goats and bullocks out of clay. Travellers have related the same fact about the children of the Makololo; and, for my part, I could not help having a kind of satisfaction when I saw these first efforts at sculpture in a land where there are no pictures and no images of deities.
DINKA CATTLE-PARK.
The accompanying illustration is designed to exhibit something of the daily routine of the Dinka. It represents one of those murahs or cattle-parks, of which I have seen hundreds. It depicts the scene at about five o’clock in the afternoon. In the foreground there are specimens of the cattle of the country. The men in charge are busied in collecting up into heaps the dung that has been exposed during the day to be dried in the sun. Clouds of reeking vapour fill the murah throughout the night and drive away the pestiferous insects. The herds have just been driven to their quarters, and each animal is fastened by a leather collar to its own wooden peg. Towards the left, on a pile of ashes, sit the owners of this section of the murah. The ashes which are produced in the course of a year raise the level of the entire estate. Semicircular huts erected on the hillocks afford the owners temporary accommodation when they quit their homes some miles away and come to feast their eyes upon the goodly spectacle of their wealth.
DINKA POPULATION.
The milking is performed in the morning hours. Truly miserable is the yield, and the most prolific of the cows does not give as much as one of our ordinary goats. This deficiency of milk is another witness of the deterioration of the breed, and no one would believe the quantity of milk it takes to produce a single pound of butter. The dew hardly goes off before ten o’clock, and it is not until that hour that the herds are driven out. It is quite rare for a murah to hold less than 2000 beasts, and some, as I have mentioned, are capable of holding 10,000. Upon an average I should reckon that for every head of the population there would be found at least three of cattle; of course, there is no lack of the poor and the destitute, and these obviously are the slaves and dependents of the rich. So large are the numbers of the Dinka, and so extensive their territory, that it must be expected that they will long perpetuate their existence amongst the promiscuous inhabitants of Africa. So far as regards their race, their line of life, and their customs, they have all the material of national unity; but where they fail is that their tribes not only make war upon each other, but submit to be enlisted as the instruments of treachery by intruders from outside. That the Khartoomers have not been able hitherto to make good their footing upon Dinka soil is due more to a general resistance to external control than to any internal condition of concord. Every attempt to bring this people into subjection has been quite a failure, and not at all the easy matter it proved with the Bongo and some other communities. The southern people are emphatically agricultural, for the most part devoted to peaceful pursuits, and so they are wanting in that kind of organisation which could unite them into a formidable body for mutual resistance. The marked peculiarity of the Dinka, as well as their adherence to all their wonted habits, renders them thoroughly useless as far as regards the slave traffic. Although the people of Khartoom for fifteen years or more have traversed their country, they have never been able in any way to make use of the material which might be afforded by a regulated commercial intercourse.