Page:Seven Years in South Africa v2.djvu/423

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Manners and Customs of the Marutse Tribes.
353

but some of these were very laboriously carved, and stood upon carefully cut fluted pedestals. Wherever a man of rank goes it is part of his dignity to be followed by an attendant carrying his stool.

My list of the Marutse handicraft would hardly be complete if I omitted to mention the fly-flappers. These are made in two parts, the handle and the whisk; the handles are either wood, reed, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, or buffalo hide; or occasionally they are formed of the horns of a gazelle or a rhinoceros; the whisks are composed of the long hair of the withers or tails of animals, of manes or feathers, no material being more common than the tails of bullocks, gnus, and jackals. The brush is fastened either inside or outside the handle, with bast, grass, horsehair, or sinew; and in most cases the handle is carved, though sometimes it is decorated instead with rings of horsehair or bands of snake-skin.

VOL. II.
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