[65]. The latter spelling is intended to represent the Makua version of the English pronunciation of Anastasius.—[Tr.]
[66]. Discovered by Consul O’Neill in 1882.—[Tr.]
[67]. The late Dr. Elmslie computed that this crossing must have taken place in 1825, as Ngoni tradition states that an eclipse (during which the chief Mombera, who died in 1892, was prematurely born) occurred at the time.—[Tr.]
[68]. This may be a mistake for chikolongwe, which is the correct form of the word in Yao—or it may be a Makonde word. Chitopole, in Yao (see Dr. Hetherwick’s Handbook) means “the crescent-shaped tribal mark of the Walomwe” (a division of the Makua). This is quite sufficiently like the curved spring of the trap in the illustration on p. [98], if the latter were turned round with the opening downwards. Probably the Yaos only know the word as applied to the keloid pattern, having learned it from the Makua, in whose language no doubt it originally had the sense attributed to it by Dr. Weule.—[Tr.]
[69]. We cannot help thinking that Dr. Weule must be mistaken in supposing this game to be borrowed from a European source. The late Commander Cameron, at Kasongo in 1874, saw a slave of the Arab, Juma Merikani, “exhibiting tricks ... with a piece of heavy, hard wood shaped like an hour-glass, and two sticks each a foot in length. Taking a stick in each hand, he could make the wood rotate rapidly and run backwards and forwards ... between the sticks, on a piece of string attached to their ends; then, by a peculiar jerk, he would send the wood flying up into the air, higher than a cricket-ball could be thrown, and catching it on the string, would again set it rolling” (Across Africa, II, 91). At this time, diabolo, of course, was quite unknown in Europe, though it had been a fashionable game in the early part of last century. A writer in the Bulletin de la Société Belge des Etudes Coloniales (December, 1908), in a notice of Dr. Weule’s book, after quoting the above passage from Cameron, refers to a description of the game (under the name of Le Diable), from a work entitled Les Amusements de la Campagne (Paris, 1826). It was believed to have originated in China.—[Tr.]
[70]. This was probably not accidental, as the Wayao always bury their dead with the knees drawn up. See Macdonald, Africana, i, 103.—[Tr.]
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
- Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling.
- Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
- Re-indexed footnotes using numbers and collected together at the end of the last chapter.