never have known, had not an adventurous surgeon gone into an oven, and burnt his fingers with his own watch.  The Africans have wonderfully borne up under unnatural conditions that would have proved fatal to most races.

“It is remarkable that the power of resistance under calamity, or, as some would say, adaptation for a life of servitude, is peculiar only to certain tribes on the continent of Africa.  Climate cannot be made to account for the fact that many would pine in a state of slavery, or voluntarily perish.  No Krooman can be converted into a slave, and yet he is an inhabitant of the low, unhealthy west coast; nor can any of the Zulu or Kaffir tribes be reduced to bondage, though all these live on comparatively elevated regions.  We have heard it stated by men familiar with some of the Kaffirs, that a blow, given even in play by a European, must be returned.  A love of liberty is observable in all who have the Zulu blood, as the Makololo, the Watuta, and probably the Masai.  But blood does not explain the fact.  A beautiful Barotse woman at NHLe, on refusing to marry a man whom she did not like, was in a pet given by the headman to some Mambari slave-traders from Benguela.  Seeing her fate, she seized one of their spears, and, stabbing herself, fell down dead."[80]

Dr. David Livingstone is certainly entitled to our utmost confidence in all matters that he writes about.  Mr. Archibald Forbes says he has seen Africans dead upon the field of battle that would measure nine feet, and it was only a few months ago that we had the privilege of seeing a Zulu who was eight feet and eleven inches in height.  As to the beauty of the Negro, nearly all African travellers agree.

“But if the women of Africa are brutal, the men of Africa are feminine.  Their faces are smooth; their breasts are frequently as full as those of European women; their voices are never gruff or deep; their fingers are long; and they can be very proud of their rosy nails.  While the women are nearly always ill-shaped after their girlhood, the men have gracefully moulded limbs, and always after a feminine type,—­the arms rounded, the legs elegantly formed, without too much muscular development, and the feet delicate and small.

“When I first went ashore on Africa, viz., at Bathurst, I thought all the men who passed me, covered in their long robes, were women, till I saw one of the latter sex, and was thereby disenchanted.

“While no African’s face ever yet reminded me of a man whom I had known in England, I saw again and again faces which reminded me of women; and on one occasion, in Angola, being about to chastise a carregadore, he sank on his knees as I raised my stick, clasped his hands, and looked up imploringly toward me,—­was so like a young lady I had once felt an affection for, that, in spite of myself, I flung the stick away, fearing to commit a sacrilege.