Adventure Magazine Cover — page 53: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

In Kaffir Kraals find her offspring behind some shields play- ing with a nest of eggs that a hen had laid there. A slapping of the infant’s hands, none too gently. He would not cry but merely “pull a face,” for the native instinctively is a stoic in every sense of the word, and this is impressed on the children as soon as they are able to understand anything. On a certain morning the mother emerges from her hut with the child under one arm and a native zembe in her right hand, which has been sharpened to the keenest edge that any steel or metal can be sharpened. She walks over to the sibayi, deposits the child on the ground, returns to the hut with the zembe in her hand and comes out an instant later with some dried herbs in a wooden dish. This she places beside the child, calls to some one to bring her amanzi. When it is brought to her she pours the water into the dish and breaks the leaves. of the herbs into the water. Having broken them all up she stirs the whole mess with a stick and tastes it, and seems satisfied that it is all right. She leaves the dish and contents there and fetches a black round piece of wood, which is about six inches thick and twelve inches in circumference. It is smooth on both sides and when exam- ined closely it will be found that innumer- able finger marks are imprinted on it and small cuts on it too numerous to be even counted. Everything being in readiness, the mother leans over and takes hold of her first-born, who, for a wonder, for once has not lived up to his name. She doubles up his chubby brown right fist, leaving only the index finger pointing; she puts this finger on the block, picks up the zembe and nicely and as clean as a whistle chops off the first joint. The child stares for a second and swoons away with sudden shock and pain. The mother picks up the end of the recently chopped finger, wraps it up in some bark cloth and then turns her attention to the babe. She first puts the little hand into the amanzi, then ties some sinew around the wrist and takes out the infant’s hand, and from somewhere on her person she unearths a piece of pig rind. She gently rubs it over the red raw end of the finger, after which she picks up the still unconscious form of her babe, takes him into the hut and sets him down on some hides and puts a piece of bark cloth over him and goes out of the hut 43 to tend the fields, possibly to hoe or sika umbona. As soon as she arrives among the other women they question her in shrill, high- pitched voices— “U nja nina umtana wako wetu?” “U lungile u lele ngoku,”’ she answers them. “How is the child?” is their query. “Very well; he is asleep just now.” Sleep and swoon being so much akin unless the latter happens in an unusual way or place no notice is taken of it; and “marking” being a tribal custom, the swooning away of the subject is very much expected. It need hardly be said that should one of the little ones subjected to this cruel custom not faint away, there is no doubt that he or she would be done away with immediately— killed instantly. The sun mounts the heavens and reaches its highest heat, which forces the women to seek some refuge from the burning rays. They separate into groups—this one going that way and another a different way, but the mother goes back to the ka’ya and finds the little one awake, weak and whimpering softly from loss of blood and pain. Flies buzz around him, some on his little forehead, some on the bark cloth that cov- ered him and on the recently cut finger. Here they are black and seem to be sucking the life from him. The mother picks him up, murmuring soit soothing words into his little pink ears and suckles the baby, after which she croons a native lullaby until the child falls asleep in her arms. She gently swings him on to her back, gets her bayz, covers the child’s head and adjusts it so it will support him, making a kind of a seat on her back for him with his legs astraddle her hips. She ties the two ends first above her breasts, reaches back and tucks the right hand of the baby so that it will be upright and not shed too much blood on her, and sallies forth to finish her work in the fields with the other women. Na (SG CSS THE reason for chopping off a finger at a certain joint is a measure of protection. The strong tribes who go down on raids and harass the other weaker or more peaceful ones, do it to keep out spies. Should a person be met in one of the forest-paths and act in an unsatis- factory way, he is commanded to hold up COIN DOOKS Co inn