In one part of his travels Schweinfurth sojourned with a tribe from whom he heard of the existence of another, still more remote, who were regarded with great fear and superstition. They were called “Mam-Mam,” great eaters (cannibals), and had been until recently considered, even by the tribe from whom Schweinfurth obtained his information, as mythical beings. He subsequently visited them, and found them to be more highly civilised than he had expected. They possessed more than one kind of intoxicating drink. That which pleased them the best, he says, was prepared from _Eleusine coracana_, a cereal, and the skill with which it was manufactured gave it a fair claim to be called beer. He says it is bright, of a reddish pale colour, and is regularly brewed from the malted grain, without the addition of any extraneous ingredient; it has a pleasant bitter flavour derived from the dark husks. How large is the proportion of beer consumed by the Mam-Mam, he says, may be estimated by simply observing the ordinary way in which they store their corn. As a regular rule, there are three granaries allotted to each dwelling, of which two are made to suffice for the supply which is to contribute the meal necessary for the household, whilst the other is entirely devoted to the grain that has been malted. Whilst the same traveller was staying with another tribe on one of the branches of the White Nile, he was present at a harvest festival of the natives, which we will allow him to describe in his own language:—“For two nights and a day, whilst I was at Geer, the natives were abandoning themselves to their wild orgies, which now for the first time I saw in their full unbridled swing. The festival was held to celebrate the sowing of the crops, and confident in the hope that the coming season would bring abundant rains, these light-hearted Bongo anticipated their harvest. For the preparation of their beer they encroached very lavishly upon their corn stores, quite indifferent to the fact that for the next two months they would be reduced to the necessity of grubbing after roots and devouring any chance bird or even any creeping thing that might come in their way. Incredible quantities of ‘legyee’ were consumed, so as to raise the party to the degree of excitement necessary for so prolonged a revel. In honour of the occasion there was produced a large array of musical instruments, but the confusion of sound beggared the raging of all the elements, and made me marvel as to what music might come to. They danced till their bodies reeked again with the oil of the butter-tree. Had they been made of india-rubber, their movements could scarcely have been more elastic; indeed, their skins had all the appearance of gutta-percha. The whole scene was more like a _fantoccini_ than any diversion of living beings.”[12]