The heart of Africa, Vol. 1 (of 2)Schweinfurth, Georg August
Science
The heart of Africa, Vol. 1 (of 2)
Schweinfurth, Georg August
Africa, Central -- Description and travel; Schweinfurth, Georg August, 1836-1925 -- Travel -- Africa, Central
As an illustration of the degree to which the Dinka devote all their
attention to cattle-breeding, and find their chief delight in it, it
may be mentioned that the great amusement of the children is to mould
goats and bullocks out of clay. Travellers have related the same fact
about the children of the Makololo; and, for my part, I could not help
having a kind of satisfaction when I saw these first efforts at
sculpture in a land where there are no pictures and no images of
deities.
[Illustration: DINKA CATTLE-PARK.]
The accompanying illustration is designed to exhibit something of the
daily routine of the Dinka. It represents one of those murahs or
cattle-parks, of which I have seen hundreds. It depicts the scene at
about five o’clock in the afternoon. In the foreground there are
specimens of the cattle of the country. The men in charge are busied
in collecting up into heaps the dung that has been exposed during the
day to be dried in the sun. Clouds of reeking vapour fill the murah
throughout the night and drive away the pestiferous insects. The herds
have just been driven to their quarters, and each animal is fastened
by a leather collar to its own wooden peg. Towards the left, on a pile
of ashes, sit the owners of this section of the murah. The ashes which
are produced in the course of a year raise the level of the entire
estate. Semicircular huts erected on the hillocks afford the owners
temporary accommodation when they quit their homes some miles away and
come to feast their eyes upon the goodly spectacle of their wealth.
[Sidenote: DINKA POPULATION.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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