Page:How and Why Library 034.jpg



and ankles; strings of bright feathers, colored bone beads and crocodile teeth on their necks, they were dressed. The boys had aprons or capes of spotted leopard skin that they wore when they went with the men to hunt elephants and other animals. They carried spears and vine ropes and big baskets. Some went in palm-tree boats to hunt other animals that lived in the river.

The women and girls planted yams and ground nuts in the fields. Slaves helped them. These slaves were black people like themselves, who had been captured in battle. The women made cooking pots of clay. They wove baskets and water jugs of reeds. Water jugs were woven very close, and the cracks filled with gum from trees, so they could not leak. Negroes did not have to work as hard as Indians, but they were always in danger of being carried away for slaves.

In the evening the hunters came home with elephant tusks and baskets of meat. Perhaps it was the flesh of the hippo-pot-a-mus, a big water pig. Perhaps—why, it might have been almost any kind of wild beast! Lions and tigers and leopards; elephants and rhi-noc-er-oses and gi-raffes; striped ze-bras and swift an-te-lopes, and go-ril-las, or man monkeys with long hairy arms, and many more queer animals live in Africa. You can see them in cages in a men-ag-er-ie, or in the park zoo, today. Most of them are as terrible as their names. They did not often come into the villages, for they were afraid of the spears and traps.

One noon-time, when everyone was sound asleep, a band of painted black warriors stole into this village and made all the people prisoners. Men and women and little children had to march along the river bank. The river grew wider, and marshy plains lay along the banks. After the plains was white sand, and miles of blue water with foam caps on the waves. The black children screamed with fright. They had never seen the ocean before. They were frightened again when a ship with white wings sailed into the river mouth. Worst of all they were driven into the darkest part of the ship, under the deck, by strange looking white men.

Two hundred years ago black people were sold as slaves in many countries. Few people thought this was wrong. Ship loads of negroes were brought to America. The good Puritans bought some of them, and the gentle Quakers. Most of the slaves were sold in parts of America where it was warmer than in New England.