Adventure Magazine Cover — page 54: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

44 his right hand. Should it show the tribal mark, he is suffered to go his way unmo- lested, but should it be cut a joint lower he is killed instantly. This system does away with passports and identification papers. The weaker tribes, on the other hand, have this marking because the weak-kneed individuals will not be able to desert and go and claim relationship with a stronger tribe, for they know the consequences, and no mother would even think of chopping off less than the prescribed joint. Accidents? They are not allowed to happen. If one does, the life of the child is the forfeit. And so, as in everything that the native does, there is a reason, though not always apparent to the uninformed outsider. The days move themselves into moons and many more moons, until they number nine or ten. During all these nyanga the child’s finger had festered a little and some matter had formed in it to be squeezed out by the mother. That Upina had not been blood-poisoned was partly because he was a healthy baby, but mostly through his character, which even then was coming to the surface. His mother attributed his wonderful escape from any great harm to the ossified centipede that she had bought from the witch-doctor’s wife for four hens and a buck. Weaning time had brought out all the stubbornness and self-will that was inborn in him and would cause him a certain amount of pain in being disciplined. | The weaning is a different and more complete one than that known in civiliza- tion, for long before the ordinary time for maternal separation the mother induces another way which is quite unique in its form and in the manner in which she intro- duces the habit to the child. She sits herself on the ground in the fash- ion tailors do in civilization. On her lap is the child, its head resting on her left knee. On the right hand side is an open steya, in which is some sour milk or amast. She steadies the child’s head with the left hand, ladles out the milk with the right, brings up the left from the head and funnels it over the child’s mouth, pours the amasz into the funnel, and the liquid goes into the mouth. Not being used to the acid-like: taste of native amast, the child promptly refuses the next handful. The mother is not troubled by this little matter, for she pinches the little nose until Adventure the nostrils stick together. The baby squalls with the pain, but the amasi drowns its cries; it is fed until its little stomach resembles a small-sized brown “blimp” filled to capacity with gas. Naturally the child is very uncomfortable; the mother eases him by rolling him over her knee on his stomach until he feels better. The ordeal having been trying, both mother and child are tired, the child drops asleep then and there. The mother lifts him up and takes him to a certain hut outside of which sit three or four old women. There are five or six children playing around the hut. She walksinside it and lays her burden down, looks at it fondly and on the impulse imprints a kiss on the soft satiny’ skin and goes out of the hut, on out of the village tango to the forest to get some fire-wood for her particular household. She returns at the setting of the sun with a good load of wood on her head. She sets it down beside her hut, not slamming it down, but as she has been taught and has done time without number, bending her neck forward, easing the load down with both hands and standing it on end. The wood is tied up with half-dried creepers and intambo. Something sticky and slimy, yet warm and human, wraps its arms around her legs. She cries in delight and picks up her son, who immediately shows his reason for welcoming her return by grabbing hold of one of her breasts and beginning to nurse, in spite of the fact that he had but two hours past been fed by one of the old women. True, the old women had not taken such pains to see that he was fed as his mother had done earlier in the day; for they had filled several dishes with amasz and gathered together all the children in their care and deposited them around the dishes, leaving the children to feed themselves the best way they could. Some had taken knee baths, others had seemed to be possessed with the idea that one should sit in the thing, and with the attendant upsetting of the dishes, they had rolled in the muck of the. sour milk, the old women not taking any notice of the children’s condition. This explains the sticky, slimy condition of Upina when his mother picked him up. She snatched him away from her, but uttered a cry of pain, for he had a firm hold of her. However, she managed to pry his little fingers loose and set him down and COIN DOOKS (©