Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/788

770 sides of which stood limbs of trees garnished with skulls and antelopes' jaws, while near the idol lay a pot containing pieces of meat in a brown sauce. The corner posts and the idol were painted with white and red spots.

Besides these fixed amulets are also to be reckoned in the category of art-works smaller toys that are worn as ornaments. Among these are some kinds to which superstition has attributed particular powers, made of antelope-horn, snail-shells, and small turtle-shells, the hollow parts of which are filled with a magic salve, made of coal-dust and palm-oil. One of the most potent amulets is the pemba, a fine, white clay resembling kaolin, which is brought from some distance, and forms an article of trade. It is used much in the same manner as the holy water of the Roman Catholics, and the expression "pemba" has a similar significance with our "good-luck" or "blessing." The term to "give pemba" is used to designate the application of the moistened substance to the arm or the breast. Feeble or sickly persons or beggars, who wish to accomplish an object with a higher personage, besmear their whole faces with it. A master, hunting his runaway slaves, paints with it a white ring around his right eye, in the belief that he will thereby be able to see more sharply.

Although the negroes possess no real writing, they seem to have the beginning of it in the shape of tally-sticks and proprietary marks. Creditors and debtors are accustomed to note the number of objects of value, pieces of cloth, etc., on sticks; and traveling merchants and porters perpetuate the number of their night-camps on their walking-canes, on which important events are also emphasized by larger or differently shaped marks. If a gourd of unusual size or beauty is growing anywhere, the owner of it cuts a peculiar mark on it, by the aid of the mysterious influence attached to which he is able to keep it as his own. Some of the best designed proprietary marks we observed are represented in Fig. 6.

The musical capacity of the negroes is higher than their aptitude for imitative art. The most complicated trumpet-signals can not be given more clearly and correctly than is done by the black soldiery of Angola. The melodies of these Africans are very touching and resonant. The antiphone of a large file of porters going out in the morning was a real treat to my otherwise little appreciative ears. It