ween whom some cause of difference has
arisen, probably in relation to their females, or some recent death,
which it is imagined the sorcerers have been instrumental in producing.
In the former case a kind of melee sometimes takes place at night, when
fire-brands are thrown about, spears launched, and bwirris [Note 62 at end
of para.] bran-dished in indescribable confusion. In the latter case the
affray usually occurs immediately after the body is buried, and is more of
a hand-to-hand fight, in which bwirris are used rather than spears, and
in which tremendous blows are struck and frightful wounds inflicted.

[Note 62: A short, heavy, wooden stick, with a knob at one end.]

In wars males are always obliged to join their relatives by blood and
their own tribe. Women frequently excite the men to engage in these
affrays to revenge injuries or deaths, and sometimes they assist
themselves by carrying spears or other weapons for their husbands. I am
not aware that women or children are ever butchered after a battle is
over, and I believe such is never the case. Single camps are sometimes
treacherously surprised when the parties are asleep, and the males
barbarously killed in cold blood. This generally takes place just before
the morning dawns, when the native is most drowsy, and least likely to
give his attention to any thing he might hear. In these cases the attack
is generally made under the belief that the individual is a desperate
sorcerer, and has worked innumerable mischiefs to their tribe. In their
attacks upon European parties I believe the natives generally advance in
a line or crescent, beating their weapons together, throwing dust in the
air, spitting, biting their beards, or using some other similar act of
defiance and hostility. I have never witnessed any such collision myself,
but am told that the attack is always accompanied by that peculiar savage
sound produced by the suppressed guttural shout of many voices in unison,
which they use in conflicts amongst themselves, and which is continued to
the moment of collision, and renewed in triumph whenever a weapon strikes
an opponent.

When hostilely disposed from either fear or from having been previously
ill-treated, I have seen the natives, without actually proceeding to
extremities, resort to all the symptoms of defiance I have mentioned, or
at other times, run about with fire-brands in their hands, lighting the
bushes and the grass, either as a charm, or in the