SCALP LOCKS.
(See [page 467].)
Yet the mule, ass, and goat enjoy a perfect immunity from this pest, and consequently the only domesticated animal among the Djour is the goat. The tsetse is a singularly local insect. It will swarm along one bank of a river, and the other bank be free; or it will inhabit little hills, or perhaps a patch of soil on level ground. Tsetse-haunted places are well known to the natives, and it has often happened that, when a herd of oxen has been driven through one of these dreaded spots, not a single animal has escaped.
Being deprived of cattle, the Djour do not depend wholly upon agriculture, but are admirable workers in iron, and by them are made many of the weapons and polished iron ornaments which are so much in request throughout Central Africa. Iron ore is abundant in their country, and, after they have finished getting in their crops, the industrious Djour set to work at their metallurgy, at which every man is more or less an adept. After procuring a sufficient quantity of ore, they proceed to smelt it in furnaces very ingeniously built.
“The cupolas are constructed of stiff clay, one foot thick, increasing toward the bottom to about fourteen inches in diameter, and four feet in height. Underneath is a small basin for the reception of the metal, and on a level with the surface are four apertures, opposite each other, for the reception of the blast pipes. These are made of burnt clay, and are attached to earthen vessels about eighteen inches in diameter and six inches in height, covered with a loose dressed goat-skin tied tightly over them, and perforated with a few small holes. In the centre there is a loop to contain the fingers of the operator. A lad, sitting between two of these vessels, by a rapid alternate vertical motion with each hand drives a current of air into the furnace, which, charged with alternate layers of ore and charcoal, nourished by eight of these rude bellows, emits a flame some eighteen inches in height at the top.
“Relays of boys keep up a continual blast, and, when the basin for the reception of the metal is nearly full, the charging of the furnace is discontinued, and it is blown out. Through an aperture at the bottom the greater part of the slag is withdrawn, and the temperature of the furnace not being sufficient to reduce the metal to the fluid state, it is mixed up with a quantity of impurities, and broken, when still warm, into small pieces. These are subsequently submitted to the heat of a smith’s hearth, and hammered with a huge granite boulder on a small anvil, presenting a surface of one and a half inches square, stuck into an immense block of wood. By this method the metal is freed from its impurities, and converted into malleable iron of the best quality. The slag undergoes the operations of crushing and washing, and the small globules of iron contained in it are obtained. A crucible charged with them is exposed to welding heat on the hearth, and its contents are welded and purified as above.
“The iron being reduced to small malleable ingots, the manufacture of lances, hoes, hatchets, &c., is proceeded with. These are beaten into shape by the boulder wielded by a powerful man; and the master smith with a hammer, handleless, like the pestle of a mortar, finishes them. With these rude implements, the proficiency they have attained is truly astonishing, many lances and other articles of their manufacture which I now possess having been pronounced good specimens of workmanship for an ordinary English smith.”
In an [illustration] on page 449 may be seen an example of the workmanship of the Djour tribe. The remarkable ornament with a long hook is an armlet, the hooked portion being passed over the arm, and then bent, so as to retain its hold. The singular objects entitled “Women’s knives” are good examples of the patient skill displayed by the Djour tribe with such very imperfect tools.
These and other products of their ingenuity are dispersed throughout several of the tribes of Central Africa, many of them being recognized as currency, just as is the English sovereign on the Continent. As if to illustrate the truth of the proverb, that men are always longing for that which they do not possess, the Djours are always hankering after beef, and in consequence buy cattle largely from their warlike neighbors, the Dinka tribe. The tsetse prevents the Djour from keeping the cattle just purchased, and so they only buy them in order to kill and eat them at once.
Owing to this traffic, the Djour are recognized as the chief smiths of Central Africa, and they can always find a market for their wares. Consequently, they are a very prosperous tribe, as even the Dinkas would not wish to destroy a people from whom they procure the very weapons with which they fight; and there is not a Djour man who cannot with ordinary industry earn enough for the purchase and maintenance of a wife as soon as he is old enough to take one. Among themselves they do not care particularly about wearing as ornaments the products of their own skill, but prize beads above every other personal decoration; and so far do they carry this predilection, that their wives are purchased with beads, and not with goats—the only cattle which they can breed. There is scarcely a Djour of full age who has not a wife, if not in fact, yet in view; and so brisk is the matrimonial market, that there is not a girl in the country above eight years of age who has not been purchased by some one as a wife.
Tobacco is as dear to the Djour as to other African tribes, and they are fond of smoking it in pipes of very great capacity. They have a rather odd mode of managing their pipes. The bowl is of reddish clay, worked on the outside into a kind of pattern like that in frosted glass. The stem is of bamboo, and is very thick, and the junction between the stem and the bowl is made tolerably air-tight by binding a piece of raw hide round it. A long and narrow gourd forms the mouthpiece, and round it is wrapped a piece of leather like that which fastens the bowl to the stem. Lest the mouthpiece should fall off, a string is passed round it, and the other end fastened to the lower end of the stem.