Here we unpacked our beads and our cloth, and commenced African trading in real earnest; what money we had we put away in our boxes, and never wanted it again during our stay in the country. The naked natives swarmed around us like flies, with grain, flour, sour milk, and honey, which commodities can be acquired for a few beads; but for a sheep they wanted a blanket, for meat is scarce enough and valuable amongst this much-raided people. We lost an ox here by one of the many sicknesses fatal to cattle in this region, and the natives hovered round him like vultures till the breath was out of his body; they then fell on him and tore him limb from limb, and commenced their detestable orgy. As one watched them eat, one could imagine that it is not so many generations since they emerged from a state of cannibalism. We found it a tough climb to the villages through the luxuriant verdure of cactus-like euphorbia, india-rubber tree, the castor-oil, and acacia with lovely red flowers. At an elevation of five hundred feet above our waggons were the mud huts of the people, and up here every night they drive their cattle into extraordinary rock stables for safety. Perched on the rocks are countless circular granaries, constructed of bright red mud and thatched with grass. One would think that a good storm of wind would blow them all away, so frail do they seem. Rounding a corner of the hill we came across a second village, nestling amongst stupendous boulders, and ascending again a little higher we reached a third by means of a natural tunnel in the rock, fortified, despite its inaccessible position, with palisades. The natives were somewhat shy of us, and fled to rocky eyries from whence to contemplate us, seated in rows in all sorts of uncomfortable angles, for all the world like monkeys. They are utterly unaccustomed to postures of comfort, reclining at night-time on a grass mat on the hard ground, with their necks resting on a wooden pillow, curiously carved; they are accustomed to decorate their hair so fantastically with tufts ornamentally arranged and tied up with beads that they are afraid of destroying the effect, and hence these pillows. These pillows are many of them pretty objects, and decorated with curious patterns, the favourite one being the female breast, and resting on legs which had evidently been evolved out of the human form. They bear a close and curious resemblance to the wooden head-rests used by the Egyptians in their tombs to support the head of the deceased, specimens of which are seen in the British Museum. They are common all over Africa, and elsewhere amongst savage tribes where special attention is paid to the decoration of the hair.