The Fang wife prepares the food for her husband and sets it in the _palaver-house_, or public-house of the town, where he eats with the other men. She does not eat with them. There is no regular time in the day for eating; and when they have begun to eat there is no regular time for stopping. The quantity of food is the only limit. On a journey they can go without food a very long time, far surpassing the endurance of the white man. And they are often compelled to travel with empty stomachs from their habit of eating all their food the first day. But afterwards they will make up for this abstinence, however prolonged. Indeed, it is by their gluttony, rather than in other ways, that they first exhibit their degradation to the white man. I have said that the children were usually pretty; but sometimes they are dreadfully misshapen by a distended stomach. The last mail brought me a charming picture of a little three-year-old missionary boy of Gaboon, prodding the stomach of a native child with his finger, and with eyes of wonder, asking: “Is dat your tummy?” One of their first efforts, after coming in contact with the white man, is an attempt to acquire the noble art of eating with a spoon. But in the first practice of it if they forget themselves for a moment they are very likely to put the hand to the mouth in the old way and drive the spoon round to the ear. Considering their ignorance they are surprisingly cleanly in their persons and their habits. After eating they invariably rinse their mouths with water and they regularly brush their teeth. For the latter purpose they commonly use a brush of soft wood with transverse ridges. They are very particular about this. Often a carrier in the bush will carry his brush along with him. Sometimes it is the sum-total of his personal effects. Everybody knows that the African has beautiful teeth. But in some tribes, and even among the Fang of the far interior, they often file the front teeth to a point, thinking to add to their beauty, but in fact adding greatly to their ugliness. I have said that the Fang are cannibals. But this loathsome custom is not as common among them as travellers have generally reported. I doubt whether the Fang eat any but their enemies—captives taken in war. And their chronic meat-hunger is not the only reason for eating their enemies. It is done as an insult to the enemy, the most deadly insult that can be offered, and means that the war will be fought to a finish, or at least until the other side has eaten one of the enemy. But the practice of cannibalism in war is intimately related to fetishism. It is believed that after eating one of the enemy, the latter can do them no harm. Their bullets will glance harmlessly off their bodies, or will even go through them without hurting, if indeed they hit them at all. Cannibalism affords them the strongest possible fetish protection.