The Africans all beckon with the hand, to call a person, in a
different way from what Europeans do. The hand is held, as surgeons
say, _prone_, or palm down, while we beckon with the hand held
_supine_, or palm up: it is quite natural in them, for the idea in
their mind is to lay the hand on the person and draw him towards them.
If the person wished for is near, say forty yards off, the beckoner
puts out his right hand on a level with his breast, and makes the
motion of catching the other by shutting the fingers and drawing him
to himself: if the person is further off, this motion is exaggerated
by lifting up the right hand as high as he can; he brings it down with
a sweep towards the ground, the hand being still held prone as before.
In nodding assent they differ from us by lifting up the chin instead
of bringing it down as we do. This lifting up the chin looks natural
after a short usage therewith, and is perhaps purely conventional, not
natural, as the other seems to be.

_16th November, 1868._--I am tired out by waiting after finishing the
Journal, and will go off to-morrow north. Simon killed a zebra after I
had taken the above resolution, and this supply of meat makes delay
bearable, for besides flesh, of which I had none, we can buy all kinds
of grain and pulse for the next few days. The women of the adjacent
villages crowd into this as soon as they hear of an animal killed, and
sell all the produce of their plantations for meat.

_17th November, 1868._--It is said that on the road to the Great Salt
Lake in America the bones and skulls of animals lie scattered
everywhere, yet travellers are often put to great straits for fuel:
this, if true, is remarkable among a people so apt in turning
everything to account as the Americans. When we first steamed up the
River Shire our fuel ran out in the elephant marsh, where no trees
exist, and none could be reached without passing through many miles on
either side of impassable swamp, covered with reeds, and intersected
everywhere with deep branches of the river. Coming to a spot where an
elephant had been slaughtered, I at once took the bones on board, and
these, with the bones of a second elephant, enabled us to steam
briskly up to where wood abounded. The Scythians, according to
Herodotus, used the bones[68] of the animal sacrificed to boil the
flesh, the Guachos of South America do the same when they have no
fuel: the ox thus boils himself.

_18th November, 1868._-