Page:Seven Years in South Africa v2.djvu/414

 former is not unlike a Turkish pipe, consisting of a straight stem about a yard long, of the thickness of a man’s thumb, occasionally carved, attached to a small clay bowl, that is likewise generally decorated with carved devices. The second form differs from the first solely in having a calabash for a stem, the smaller end of which constitutes the mouthpiece. A native rarely forgets his pipe, even on his shortest journeys, especially if he is travelling with a white man, and carries his tobacco in a little cotton or leather bag that is tied to his mantle or waistbelt. For longer journeys the dacha-pipe is an indispensible companion; the water reservoirs of these exhibit an infinite variety of form. Dacha is composed of the dried leaves of a kind of hemp, which is planted round nearly all the South African huts; when smoked through water it is slightly intoxicating in its effects. The pipes consist of three parts; the bowl, the stem, and the horn containing the water, the broad end of the horn forming the mouthpiece by which the smoke is inhaled. An inclination to cough is induced by the inhalation, and the more violent the tendency the greater the enjoyment.

Although snuff-boxes of home manufacture, as well as those introduced by white men, are found throughout South Africa, I nowhere saw such a variety as amongst the Marutse. The materials utilized for this purpose are almost too diversified to enumerate; ivory, hippopotamus tusks, the bones of animals and birds, stag’s horn, rhinoceros horn, claws, snakes’ skins, leather, wood, reeds, gourd shells, and any fruit husks that were either globular or oval; besides all these, not a few metal boxes were to be met with that were of foreign make,