Not far from Obbo-land there is a district inhabited by the Kytch tribe. In 1825 there was exhibited in the principal cities of Europe a Frenchman, named Claude Ambroise Seurat, who was popularly called the “Living Skeleton,” on account of his extraordinary leanness, his body and limbs looking just as if a skeleton had been clothed with skin, and endowed with life. Among the Kytch tribe he would have been nothing remarkable, almost every man being formed after much the same model. In fact, as Sir S. Baker remarked of them, they look at a distance like animated slate-pencils with heads to them. The men of the Kytch tribe are tall, and, but for their extreme emaciation, would be fine figures; and the same may be said of the women. These physical peculiarities are shown in the [engraving No. 1] on the next page.
Almost the only specimens of the Kytch tribe who had any claim to rounded forms were the chief and his daughter, the latter of whom was about sixteen, and really good-looking. In common with the rest of the tribe she wore nothing except a little piece of dressed hide about a foot square, which was hung over one shoulder and fell upon the arm, the only attempt at clothing being a belt of jingling iron circlets, and some beads on the head.
(1.) GROUP OF THE KYTCH TRIBE.
(See [page 436].)
(2.) NEAM-NAM FIGHTING.
(See [page 443].)
Her father wore more clothing than his inferiors, though his raiment was more for show than for use, being merely a piece of dressed leopard skin hung over his shoulders as an emblem of his rank. He had on his head a sort of skull-cap made of white beads, from which drooped a crest of white ostrich feathers. He always carried with him a curious instrument,—namely, an iron spike about two feet in length, with a hollow socket at the butt, the centre being bound with snake skin. In the hollow butt he kept his tobacco, so that this instrument served at once the offices of a tobacco box, a dagger, and a club.
It is hardly possible to conceive a more miserable and degraded set of people than the Kytch tribe, and, were it not for two circumstances, they might be considered as the very lowest examples of humanity.
For their food they depend entirely upon the natural productions of the earth, and pass a life which is scarcely superior to that of a baboon, almost all their ideas being limited to the discovery of their daily food. From the time when they wake to the hour when they sleep, they are incessantly looking for food. Their country is not a productive one; they never till the ground, and never sow seed; so that they are always taking from the ground, and never putting anything into it. They eat almost every imaginable substance, animal and vegetable, thinking themselves very fortunate if they ever find the hole of a field-mouse, which they will painfully dig out with the aid of a stick, and then feed luxuriously upon it.