Page:Seven Years in South Africa v2.djvu/377

 Salt has to be brought from such long distances, either from the west or south-west, that it is only the wealthier people that can afford to use it at all.

The poorer people have only one regular meal a day, which is taken in the evening; the well-to-do classes have two daily meals; the first an hour and a half or two hours after sunrise, and the other at sunset. Beer is usually drunk after every meal. Of the two kinds of beer made from kaffir-corn, one is strong, called matimbe; the second sort, known as butshuala, being much weaker; besides these, there is a sweet beer made from wild fruits, that produced from the morula fruit being like cider; and there is likewise the honey-beer, or impote, which I have had to mention several times before.

Besides being clever in their cooking, the Marutse-Mabundas are very clean; they always keep their materials in well-washed wooden or earthenware bowls, or in suitable baskets or calabashes. They were the first people that I saw making butter. Their cleanliness in their work only corresponds to that of their persons, and I am repeating what I have elsewhere observed in stating that rather than lose their bath they are always ready to run the risk of being snapped up by crocodiles.

They smoke more tobacco than any of the tribes among whom ithas been introduced by the white men, accustoming themselves to it from their earliest youth, and all of them, including young girls, take snuff. The snuff which they use is a compound of tobacco ashes, pulverized nymphæ-stalks, and the secretion from the glands of the Rhabdogale mustelina. Tobacco is usually made up into little cakes, which are strung together in rows.