Both he and many of Ibrahim's party had been
frequent witnesses to acts of cannibalism, during their residence among
the Makkarikas. They described these cannibals as remarkably good
people, but possessing a peculiar taste for dogs and human flesh. They
accompanied the trading party in their razzias, and invariably ate the
bodies of the slain. The traders complained that they were bad
associates, as they insisted upon killing and eating the children which
the party wished to secure as slaves: their custom was to catch a child
by its ankles, and to dash its head against the ground; thus killed,
they opened the abdomen, extracted the stomach and intestines, and tying
the two ankles to the neck they carried the body by slinging it over the
shoulder, and thus returned to camp, where they divided it by
quartering, and boiled it in a large pot. Another man in my own service
had been a witness to a horrible act of cannibalism at Gondokoro.
The traders had arrived with their ivory from the West, together with a
great number of slaves; the porters who carried the ivory being
Makkarikas. One of the slave girls attempted to escape, and her
proprietor immediately fired at her with his musket, and she fell
wounded; the ball had struck her in the side. The girl was remarkably
fat, and from the wound, a large lump of yellow fat exuded.
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