It appears that this extraordinary custom is also common to some hill tribes in India and in the Andes of South America, but I never heard of it anywhere else in Africa.
The richer Mundombes have an odd manner of making their beds. A layer of clay about six or nine inches thick and about two feet wide is made in the huts, and when dry constitutes their sleeping place; this they rub over with rancid butter to make it smooth, and they lie on it without any skin or cloth under them!
The Mundombes generally wear their hair in a large woolly bush, but the young men and women cut it into a variety of strange forms and patterns.
Their arms are knobbed sticks often fancifully carved, small axes ([Plate XIV.]), bows and arrows, and “assagaias” or spears, generally much ornamented with beads, &c. They are expert hunters, and the abundance of large game supplies them with more animal food than other tribes of Angola.
They are a hard, wiry race, capable of undergoing great fatigue and hunger, and a very good trait in their character is that they are good-natured and merry. They are not a bad race, but are wild, roving, and intractable to teaching or civilization. Not one of them can be induced to work beyond carrying loads or a hammock, which latter they have also a unique way of doing. Supposing eight to be carrying a white man in a hammock, three will range themselves and run along on each side; at a loud clap of their hands, one Mundombe from the right will shove his shoulder under the pole behind the carrier in front, who passes to the left. Another on the left does the same with the carrier behind, who passes to the right, and so they go changing round and round every few yards, and running along all the time without stopping a moment.
It took me several months before I could induce the Mundombes at Benguella to carry the copper ore from the mine at Quileba to Benguella, and this was more from distrust of not being paid than anything else. I used to give them a load of ore, and a small ticket which was either paid in copper money or was endorsed by the agent at Benguella, and was then passed by them at any shop in payment of the cloth or rum they might purchase.
Next to the Cabindas I think the Mundombes are more fond of rum or other spirits than any tribe in Angola, and they seem capable of drinking almost any quantity without other effect than making them extremely jolly. They will never stop in Benguella at night, but all clear out before sunset to their towns and villages a little way off.
Pieces of copper are sometimes brought to Benguella by the caravans, which are said to be smelted by the natives of Lunda. They are cast in a very peculiar form, something like that of the letter X. All I have seen have been of this shape, and all have thick inner edges joined by a ridge ([Plate XIV.]).
I have never been able to ascertain or guess what the mould could possibly be that invariably gives this character to them, for whatever variation there may be in the length of the arms or waist, the thicker inner edge, connected with a more or less prominent ridge, is always there.
