The principal dish of the African is a kind of maize porridge made rather thick, so as to hold together in lumps. It is for flour to make this porridge that the women are continually pounding at the mortars. The porridge is always eaten with something tasty to send it down, and is never eaten without this relish. Now this relish may be simply juicy leaves got in the bush and boiled as we boil cabbage, or it may be meat of some kind no matter what, or it may be fish no matter how high, but it is oftenest beans--porridge and beans being the everyday food. African children have but two regular meals in the day and the porridge one is the afternoon meal. The forenoon one may be made of sweet potatoes, or green maize or pumpkins, or cucumbers--anything that does not require much cooking on the part of the mothers. But from early morning onwards the children always have an eye for anything that will help to appease their hunger. Thus the boys go off early with their bows and arrows to shoot birds, or they may go digging for field mice, or setting traps for any small kind of animal that may be foolish enough to enter them. These little creatures are skinned and roasted, spitted on bamboos, and kept ready for porridge time. At certain seasons of the year a kind of caterpillar is gathered to be roasted to make relish. I have seen children with their hands full of yellow-green crawling things as proud as if they had been a handful of sweets. Then when the sky is dark with locusts the children are glad. Knowing the locusts cannot fly till the sun has warmed them, the boys and girls go out early in the morning and gather baskets full of them. The legs and wings are torn off and the bodies roasted. Then again at the time when the winged white ants are issuing forth from underground to fly off and make another home, the cunning children place a pot over the hole and catch hundreds. These also they roast and consider delicious. Their sweets are very few--wild honey and sugar-cane. They do like sugar-cane, and tear it and munch it with their strong white teeth. It is very sweet and not unpleasant to chew. But a white man must get it cut into little bits for him before he can enjoy it. He cannot eat it as the black people do. Some of the tribes eat frogs and snakes and land-crabs and snails, but many of them do not. Those who do not eat such things look down upon those who do, and consider them savages and altogether to be despised. Then again in every tribe there are certain superstitious customs as regards food. A mother will warn her child, saying, “My child, you must never eat rabbit. If you eat rabbit your body will be covered with sores.” So this child will refrain from rabbit, and so on with other kinds of meat, each child has something or other that is forbidden to him.