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About The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 13, 1908)
, fc.-W ' IV " :kr S-ti ! f ' v T , - - lMESji HER TO- THE CiROOtl- XHE G1KL..1S "UNDER TMT COTTPOlOH THE "WDilAliiS . BACK.'. BY PRANK G. CARPENTER. BEFORE I leave the heart of the Black Continent, to start south for the white man's Africa, that land of old and diamonds below the Zambesi, 1 want to write a letter about the queer customs of our African sisters. They are an Important half of this dark-complexioned world, and every , nation and tribe has its own ways of treating them. I have already written of the .Mohammedan maidens along the coast of the Mediter ranean: they go about clad all in white or black, each having only a single eye hole in her garments to find her way along the streets. I have written of the fatr-skinned Jewesses of Tunis. They dress in Jackets and trousers, and a pair of their embroidered breeches often costs as much as $200. I have told you how they are fattened for marriage by epecial feeding and how a popular belle often .weighs . pounds, or about as much as our own dear Secretary Taft. I J;ave described the women of Tripoli and Egypt, where the girls cover their faces with long veils when they go out of 1 cloors. and also the dancing maidens of he Sahara, called the Ouled Nails, who tiave brazen, bare faces and paint their eyelids black with kohl, and stain their linger nails and toe nails red with henna. Further down the continent I learned much about the women of the British possessions, where John Bull is now regulating the marriages, fixing the price of brides, old and young, lean and fat. yood-looking and the reverse, at $3 apiece; nd still farther south, about the women now ruled by the Germans, who are al lowed to marry as they please, according to custom. I have also notes before me gathered during my travels In Portuguese East Africa, Mashonaland. Matabeleland, and here on the edge of the. Kongo Free State. Indeed, the material is such that J hardly know where to begin, and I e-hall dip into my notes, jumping from one place to another, as the subject de mands. Adventure- With a Vsukuma Bride. Let me start with ,the description of a redding procession which I saw in Ger man East Africa, on the lower edge of Victoria Nyanza. The people there are known as Basukumas. There are half a million of them and they are considered & strong race. They are Bantu negroes, who dross In cowsklns and cottons and who have cattle, sheep and goats. When A valine, man there wantK a wife he DRVS her father 60 sheep for ner or agrees to work ror tne oia man u numwr ui yeais. aii w.apriacra i.mnrompnti nre ma.de hv Ito-betweens. and the matchmaker brings (the bride to tne groom, in me niranwunc the chief bridesmaid has arranged the frnnm'a hut for the occasion and a new ed is made, consisting of a framework of wood with a mattress of oxskina. The oridesmaid is paid a sheep for this work. After this she goes witn xne nuucnraantr. mitrht h failed Another bridesmaid to the house of the bride and brings her H ln OT-aafr .f via It was such a procession that I stopped mnminr nn its wav to the groom. It i - - - r--w- T-ti nr. n f m' n m P Tl NCOnBlBlU 11 " " " " - " kjt.ra,l Im varment of COWSkitlS and COt- jton. yelling and singing as they danced tlong about a queer-iooung nguro wuiun h.v.MjM.aiv mnviwl in the center. At jflrst I could not make out what it was. lit looked like a woman with a gigantic taump. wrapped around with bright fig k.,r. Indian cotton. As the party came L.i.. ihh fleure turned sidewise. The li - .V,sn tnnt the nhHIie Of tlUIHIl hform and I could see that the woman was evidently carrying a sister or brother under her calico gown. I handed my camera to my son. Jack, who "was with arrrnteH the ludv. She laughed and I attempted to make out what kind of a creature she carried. I could see i . i hiuir 'footsie wootsies" stick ing out at the front, and by the outline of ,,.h.. cotton could see that it covered a lusty girl who was holding on m u .ma m the woman who carried her. Her hands were clasped together .over the bridesmaids breast ana tne 'bridesmaid was also supporting her by !vu.. hoi- ankles, which stuck out on iah IH the body. I put my hand on I har.tr unit the bride sauirmed Aut when I attempted to touch her bare feet the bridesmaid objected. All this wook but a few moments and as I stepped 'back the procession went on. The sec d hriH.tmiM mood behind the bride- hM nn umbrella over her, As the party neared the hut of the groom a score of other women, the rela tives of the groom, rushed out and scat- n.-or tit hrlde and the escort- . in party. I peeped into the hut Just be : fore they arrived, and thus got a look at the bridal chamber. It was a dark closet shut in by bark-cloth, and the bed was of cowskin. I was told that the groom was nr.u.nr anrl that ha WOUld COmS 1. J ' t , , . I rn and take possession after the brides- maids had arranged everything and fitted ' tha but for tho pair. Ka had already V X ' Ik. rfv.iw te given 60 sheep to his father-in-law and one sheep to the bride's sister. What Wives Cost. Sixty sheep seemed to me a big price for a wife, and I asked the Germans whether many girls were not sold at reduced rates. The reply was in the affirmative, but it was added that a good, lusty woman was worth something as a worker and tmit the women were the slaves of the family. They take care of the stock, cultivate the crops and also keep house. The men do little but loaf. Besides it costs almost nothing to keep an extra wife there, as the women are not allowed to eat chicK ens or eggs, even the necks and the giz zards being forbidden to them. In the Kavlrondo country at the northeast of the lake, I was informed that the usual price for a wife is 40 iron hoes, 30 goats and a cow. and that these articles can be paid on Installments. In Uganda the gov ernment price is S3 per girl, but more is usually given for the daughter of a chief. Among the Kandi tribes the richest men have from 10 to S wives, and the price of a good maiden of 14 is six cows. Girls are often betrothed as early as 7. and they are married at 11. xne cowa are ou-u paid on installments, and if no child Is kim nHrhln a vear after the marriage the husband may stop payment. It is among these jsanai, as wiin mo x ,,.t th atlnnea of Mount Kili- 1UUJIU wvuiii ..." 1 " manjaro and also on the highlands or British East Ainca, mat. ure juui married girls dwell with the young un married men in the bachelor quarters, and until they are old enough to get married. A Masai man ts not suppowa w .nn. until he is 30. Among tne uuvumas m price of a wife is two cows and five goats. t,A r.thoi. nf .the hride kecDS one of the cows and a goat, the other four goats being given to tne relative.. A Tax on Wives. rtnnrn in Dhnriesia the usual price for a strong, good-looking girl is four cows, and if she is the daughter of a cniei sne may bring as much as five or six. The govern ment taxes every native V a year tor nis hut and family, and this includes a tax : it ha haa more than one he tur UHU rt u'. -i ia .killing fnr farh extra wife. IB ft ' " IV onuiiuf). - The Kaffir girls are married at as early as 13, and a girl is oneit ohhkcu ' years of age. Such engagements are made by the parents and several cattle form a part of the dowry. It Is a custom among the Kaffirs not to aiiow a ioi" mum pr to marrv until each of his older broth ers has at least one wife, and the father often helps pay the" brides. About mxe enire gins uncn wc- . . i j th.i. tnfanrv. nnd thev are sometimes actually engaged before they are born, in sucn cases mo groom or his parents are expected to clothe the girl until sne is oiu enuuKn m be married, but as the only clothing in her early life is a waist ciotn ana oicen m. hA a .trlnv tha aTttPllSA l.e TlOt DDI UIUID ma" n ' heavy. The people there have from one to 20 wives, accoraing to meir wea.nn, mm in times past the chiefs had harems of as hunrtroH wntHPII I'flrh Aft Hi iu y on c -" rule the number of wives is decreasing all over South Ainca. ana wiin me unui for foreign goods which is gradually growing, making the support of women more expensive, there is likely to be still further decrease. Bridal Costumes. The Question of dress Is not a serious one in most parts of Central Africa. It is different north of the Sahara, where a pair of bridal trousers may, as I have stated, cost J200 and upward, and where breeches of cloth of gold are not uncom mon. The lightest wedding costume 1 have seen in my travels is that which the women wear at the end of the Uganda railroad. The men go absolutely naked and the married women have on nothing but a sort of fly brush tall about 12 inches long, which they fasten to a string around the waist. In this same country the women wear no clothes whatever until married, when they adopt the tail. A little change is now beginning along the line of the rail road, but a few miles back nudity pre vails. Notwithstanding this, the Kavl rondo are said to be of a much higher grade of morality than their neighbors, who are more or less clad. A little south of that region I came upon a tribe where the ladles wear about the waist fiber fringes of the length of my hand or longer, and on the opposite j. t j ir& victoria I saw hundreds of o-lri. clad all in grass. I say "all." but this means only a skirt which reaches from the waist to the knees. The young The Uganda women wear bark-cloth and cover the whole person. They have great blankets which, they wrap around thcTS, binding them in at the breast and -1 .. TnHoiilt thav AM BS1 Well CO tfrpd that they could go through an American -i. .t.hn.. katn artwatad hv that nnlir. ( 1 L wtuivui v-.., . - J a This would not be possible for a Kavlron do woman. Down hero near Broken Hill the women - jtltth which reachea from the wai.i t the knees, and also a kind of A.rAv tha hroaat n n it haplc. onuon . v' ' " 1 : " ' 1 They are plump, lusty-looking maidens. THE SUNDAY OKEGOyiAX, PORTLAND, SEPTEMBER 13, 1908. jI) i.k . - wo. -r t T&IBEtf" OF and can use th native hoe and mattock far better than the men. Indeed, the men do almost no work in the cornfields, that work being left to their wives. Our American belles adore dimples, and it is said that their dimples are some times artificially-made. They adorn their wWte faces with black patches of court plaster, and also comb their hair in out landish shapes. I have seen nn American beauty with a diamond set in one of her front teeth, and we all know of women who paint, powder and enamel. The same effort to beautiful one's seir goes on throughout Africa, save that the standards of beauty are different." Among the Banyoro, who live north of Uganda, the women knock out the six front teeth of the lower jaw and the young men do the same. The Jaluo women have a simi lar custom. On the south side of ictoria Nvanza there are tribes where the wo men file their teeth sharp like a. saw, and the Buvumas knock out two of the Incisors, tlie price for each such operation being four cowry shells or a fraction or a cent. , . . Most of the African womfn scar their bodies to beautify them. I have seen girls with Persian shawl patterns on their breasts nd abdomens, and others with great welts on tneir itrreiigtig- .. . r Amazing Memory of A. Dead llbr.rS ot Consres, Had T. Slot. ,1 Ilorn,,.lo. AMAN who Will DB misa ' worth R. Spofford, Librarian of Congress between the years 1864 ... . i n .a I. Atna- and 1897, and from 1S97 until his death in New Hampshire the other day Chief Assistant Librarian of Congress. All told, ho lad been attached to the Na tional Library In one capacity or an other, but for the greater part of the time as its head, for 46 years, having been appointed to a place in the library by President Lincoln in 1861. Ho will be missed by a good many different classes of people here, but chiefly by tha Legislators. More than a generation of Representatives in Con gress, and particularly the new fellows, were In the habit of leaning upon brusque-mannered, book-absorbed Spof ford. Yet during all the period, nearly half a century, which the librarian spent in Washington nobody ever suc ceeded in finding out what his politics were. It is doubtful if he leaned toward any party. He was a student and a keen critic of the game, but he never dipped into it to the extent of revealing even a svmptom of partisanship. The difficulties underlying such neu trality may better be understood when It is stated that Republicans and Demo- .III,. In CnnrrPHS lent ear to his wisdom when they found themselves in tight pinches. He never gave unso ii.h. a itiria nut when he was ap proached by a man desirous of profiting PUZZLE-WHAT IS THE CUSTOM? OF COURTSHIP THE BLACtf cheeks, marking the tribe to which they belong. In the Sudan there are scores of such tribal marks, and -ayh tribe has its own way of scarring. Mutilation of v. AnM la oAmmnn tlirnnchout Central Africa. The Swahilis enlarge the holes in the lobes until they become mere straps .hth n.m tnlrtaa o clnna tumbler The9e eame girls have holes all around the rims of their ears, wnicn tney nn wim rolls of paper. The Masai women load down their ears with jewelry, fastening great weights to the holes in the lobes so that, they are gradually pulled down until they flop against the shoulders. In German East Africa there are people who wear great rings and plugs In their lower Hp and In the upper l!p as welL Such ornaments elongate the upper lip so that it extends several inches out over the mouth. Queer Ways of Hair Dressing. Until I came to Africa I thought the American girl could put up her hair In more outlandish ways than any other maiden on earth. She has many competitors and some superiors among the ebony belles of the Black t onti. by his experience and counsel he never considered the party end of the propo sition, but told what he thought of the situation in a stralght-from-the-shoulder, take-it-or-leave-lt manner, that could admit of no doubt as to his mean ing. Nor did it make the slightest differ ence to him whether his advice was followed or not. Probably Spofford did not know, in one case out of a hundred, whether or not his counsel had been adopted. He was that unusual combi nation, a book-submerged man who was . .Inoira In plrlftR. tOUCh With thO doings of the world, but he considered the affair at an end when a public man i i htm nhat h thouatht of a certain situation in politics, got the answer and went his way. He was well beloved for his sound sense and his humor and a certain quaintness of temperament and dispo sition by a line of publtc men extending from Tliad Stevens to Theodore Roose velt. He was considered one of the most learned men in the world. He was the court of last resort In Washington as to knotty points - of parliamentary procedure. He wrote a standard book on that subject, and it was no unusual thing for Speakers of the House like Blaine and Keifer and Crisp and Hen derson and Cannon to ask Spofford to help them to unravel knotty parliamen tary kinks that came up. He will be missed and mourned too by hundreds of Washington young men whom he aided in getting an educa tion. He had a way of mapping out MAN, JUST BACK FROM HIS VACATION, TELLING ABOUT? CONTINENT I ;:7f . y f .,. ::-::--;ms..:: .-5- ? r 'fiiinmii mi i i t I THE. OUTFIT Or" LA. KAVJR.QNDO MAIDEN COSTS JLJTTLE nent. It Is true that these African maidens in most cases have to conquer the kink or corkscrew curl which cov ers their pates, but nevertheless they have many creations which surpass the wonders of the marcel wave, of our mighty pompadours and the other oddi ties formed with the aid of the rat, the curling iron or curl paper. The Sudan ese braid their hair in long even curls, so that it hangs out like the snakes of the IVedusa. The Zulus put it up in mighty towers, which often extend a full foot above- the crown of the head, and down in Natal a bridegroom goes out to court his sweetheart with a pair of real cowhorns tied upright upon his head, so that they look as U they grew there. Along the eastern coast of Africa there are many natives who braid the hair in little windrows over the scalp. Spofford at Ev.n.-. Scrrtc. regular university courses of reading for promising appearing young chaps introduced to him who couldn't afford to go to college- and who did their studying in accordance with his direc tions after working hours. Scores of men who were put through the mill in this way under Spofford's guidance have made good in many fields. Perhaps he will be remembered long er for his amazing memory than for any other reason. He could not, as was said of Macaulay, remember the hap penings on the day when he was born, nor did he perform such Macaulay feats as corrunitting the whole of Milton or Homer or the Bible to memory. Never theless it was said of Spofford by schol ars both of this country and of Europe that probably he possessed the most phenomenal memory of any man that ever lived. He not only knew books, but he knew their contents. It was worth while to see the tall, loose-Jointed old man with the swarthy skin of an Indian engaged in "reading" a book. What the average man gets out of a book by careful reading Spofford absorbed by skimming. When the Library of Congress was still In the Capitol you would come upon the librarian standing in some dim, out-of-the-way book-heaped aisle, with four or five ponderous books under his arms and an other opened before htm. He would be quite unconscious of what was happening around him while occupied with the job of extracting the meat from the book be fore his eyes. He would turn the pages over rapidly, and farther back there are many tribes in which the women shave the head close. This is so with the Baganda and the Masai. Many of the native women of Omdurman, in the Sudan, shave not only the head, but every part of the body, and it is a common cus tom among many tribes for both men and women to have themselves shaved from head to foot before marriage. Among some people the hair is pulled out. This is also the custom among our Moros of the Philippines and cer tain tribes of the Amazon. The Batoro, a tribe which Inhabits the country between Lakes Albert and Albert Edward, shave and oil their brides before the wedding. The girl's head is scraped off by tha village bar ber, and her own sister uses the razor over the rest of the body. After this she is smeared from crown to toe nail with butter and castor oil, the stuff being well rubbed into the skin. The Sesse Islanders pull out their eyelashes, and babies have their heads shaved shortly after birth. The 'old Zulu men and women pull out the gray hairs as they begin to appear, think ing that gray hair makes old age. The picking out the facts as the crab man picks out the meat and often muttering to himself as he fluttered the pages. He'd go through the book to the last page, in cluding addenda and errata, and then he'd fling it into one of the heaps of books in the aisle and "eat up." as the library employes used to term it, one of the other books under his arm. Not a word could be got out of him. even if the man waiting to address him were a haughty United States Senator, until he'd quite finished skimming the books he held closely gripped under his arms, "for fear they'd get away from him." as was said by the men under him. Then, the last book gobbled up, in a way of speaking, he'd emerge from a sort of daze and step back to the world of affairs again. Everything that his mind absorbed by this skimming process stuck there. This was proved hundreds of times by marvel ling friends of the librarian, who could not see how anybody could get the heart out of a book by riffling over the pages in that manner. Every time they tested him, as they often did, and often on wagers with friends, too, they found that he knew the contents of the book he had merely skimmed as thoroughly as If he'd spent a laborious week in reading it. Not only that, he'd even remember the number of the page on which a certain fact or fig ure, selected for the purpose of tryinS him out. was presented. It made no difference whether the vol ume were a book of philosophy or a book of statistics, Spofford got the ln'ards out of it by his skimming method as thor oughly as the reader who pondered the book for days. Even more astonishing, he could and did quote long passages, some of them in foreign languages, from books hA .iotimh nvpr In this wav. The late Archbishop Chappelle and Spofford were close friends, although at different poles In the matter of religion. One day a number of years ago the Arch bishop found the librarian hurriedly browsing in his accustomed manner through a new work by Ernest Renan. Archbishop Chappelle. a courtly and af fable Frenchman, waited until Spofford had tossed away the Renan volume. The Archbishop himself had read the Renan book with great care as soon as it Issued from the press and was thoroughly famil iar with its contents. Spofford." he said chaillngly to the nervous, jerky old librarian, "why do you wate your own and the Government's valuable time in such an unsatisfactory, "Explain that, sir. explain It, said the old gentleman, wheeling in bis quick, marionettelike way upon the archbishop. "I mean." said the archbishop, "picking up a book that it took Renan about 30 years to write and professing, yes, sir. professing, to find out the meaning of it, say. within the space of 10 minutes while standing first on one leg and then the other and flicking over its pages." "Tush, tush, sir; I know every line of the book, every line of It. sir." replied the librarian. "One does not have to be a mole, sir, and bury himself in the ground to read a book, like you religionists." With a smile the archblshep picked up the discarded Renan volume, openej it at random, and asked SpofTord what the Frenchman had to say with reference to a certain doctrinal subject. ' To the archbishop's everlasting aston ishment SDofford repeated in French, and almost word for word. Renan's views as to the matter about which Chappelle had Inquired. Carrying the test further, the archbishop, In the manner of an exam iner, took the librarian smack through the difficult 'volume, only to find at the end of the test that the librarian, who had only picked up the book a little while before in wandering through the aisles, had every part of the book as pat as if he'd been poring over it in a study for days and weeks. Tom Reed, a man who always had to be shown, used to take keen delight in younger women there rub red clay and oil in their hair, and they often plait it into string-like strands. When they trim their hair In Pondoland the hair dresser puts a strap around the fore head, and cuts the hair level with this by means of a knife, stopping at th strap, which protects the skin. Aftet they are married they often train theii hair into a cone-shaped mass, stiffen ing It with red clay and oil for tin purpose. In all African countries the native men are almost as particular as th women as to the dresslnn of their hair. In Zululand the married men wear rings around their heads, twining the hair over them and then smearing H with charcoal and oil so that It can b polished. It 1 a great insult to at tempt to pull off a man's ring. In many places the men shave their heads, and up here In Rhodesia there is one tribe which puts the hair up so that a great spear shoots out right above tin crown. This spear of hair Is some times eo long that the man cannot stand upright in his hut without dis arranging it. Broken Hill, Northwestern Rhodesia. exhibiting Spofford's phenomenal powers of memory to Incredulous friends. Upon an occasion Reed strolled into the old li brary in the Capitol to see Spofford about something or other. He had to prowl all over the place before he came upon the librarian, who, standing near a window, was skimming over the pages of a three volume "Life and Itters" of Charles James Fox, the British statesman, that had Just been issued from the press. Reed tackled Spofford about the thing he had in mind, but the librarian didn't even see him, much less hear him. He went right along brushing over the pages of the volumes about Fox. Reed, who was then Speaker, smiled his Chinese smile and wandered back to the House of Representatives. He knew there was no use In trying to get anything out of Spofford while the librarian was "read ing" a book. Reed made a careful note of the work he had seen Spofford absorbing on that occasion, and he got the book and read it himself with considerable care. Two years later he walked in upon Spofford. accom panied by some friends from Maine, one day and said to him: "Spofford, I'm interested In this Fox fellow, the English Premier, you know. Tremendous gambler, wasn't he? Where can I get some facts about his gambling? Was his gambling exaggerated?" and a number of questions of similar import. Spofford named, offhand, the biography of Fox that Reed had himself seen the librarian skimming two years before, in which the matter of Fox's gambling hab its was dwelt upon exhaustively. Then he summarized. In about 400 or 600 words, the gist of what the biography had set forth as to Fox's gambling habits, glu ing the amounts of great sums that Frftt was said in that work to have won or lost at hazard on certain occa-lons. Reed and his friends listened attentive ly and then when they returned to the Speaker's room Reed sent for the biog raphy of Fox. He turned to the part of it which -dealt with Fox's ganjbling methods and showed his visitors that every fact and figure that had been quoted by the librarian in his short sum mary was exact to a dot. Once the late Senator George Vest, of Missouri, got into a discussion with a Southern friend as to the production of cotton in the South immediately before and immediately after the Civil War. The discussion took place in the Senator's rooms and he had no books of reference from which to ascertain the desired facts. "I'll call up Spofford and ask him: he'll know." said the Senator, and he went to the telephone and got the librarian on the wire. "See here. Spofford." said Senator Vest through the phone, "there's a crazy man down here at my place who pretends to know something about cotton, but he doesn't know any more about cotton fig ures than I do about the wool produc tion of the Falkland Islands. What I want to know is this: How much cotton did this country produce in the year 1S53 and in the year 1S69?" Spofford named the two amounts In bales without leaving the phone. Not only that, but he named the numbers of bales exported each year and the number of bales kept at home for domestic con sumption. "1 don't know what we're going to do up at the Capitol when that old boy dies," said Senator Vest, hanging up the receiver. "All the same, I'm going to check him up on this." and he made a note of the figures Spofford had given him. On the following day. when he went to the Capitol. Senator Vest looked Into a book of reference and found that the cotton figures Spofford had given him In that offhand fashion over the phone were correct to a bale. i
