They have two breeds of cattle among them.  One, called the Batoka, because captured from that tribe, is of diminutive size, but very beautiful, and closely resembles the short-horns of our own country.  The little pair presented by the King of Portugal to H.R.H. the prince consort, is of this breed.  They are very tame, and remarkably playful; they may be seen lying on their sides by the fires in the evening; and, when the herd goes out, the herdsman often precedes them, and has only to commence capering to set them all a gamboling.  The meat is superior to that of the large animal.  The other, or Barotse ox, is much larger, and comes from the fertile Barotse Valley.  They stand high on their legs, often nearly six feet at the withers; and they have large horns.  Those of one of a similar breed that we brought from the lake measured from tip to tip eight and a half feet.

The Makololo are in the habit of shaving off a little from one side of the horns of these animals when still growing, in order to make them curve in that direction and assume fantastic shapes.  The stranger the curvature, the more handsome the ox is considered to be, and the longer this ornament of the cattle-pen is spared to beautify the herd.  This is a very ancient custom in Africa, for the tributary tribes of Ethiopia are seen, on some of the most ancient Egyptian monuments, bringing contorted-horned cattle into Egypt.

All are remarkably fond of their cattle, and spend much time in ornamenting and adorning them.  Some are branded all over with a hot knife, so as to cause a permanent discoloration of the hair, in lines like the bands on the hide of a zebra.  Pieces of skin two or three inches long and broad are detached, and allowed to heal in a dependent position around the head—­a strange style of ornament; indeed, it is difficult to conceive in what their notion of beauty consists.  The women have somewhat the same ideas with ourselves of what constitutes comeliness.  They came frequently and asked for the looking-glass; and the remarks they made—­while I was engaged in reading, and apparently not attending to them—­on first seeing themselves therein, were amusingly ridiculous.  “Is that me?” “What a big mouth I have!” “My ears are as big as pumpkin-leaves.”  “I have no chin at all.”  Or, “I would have been pretty, but am spoiled by these high cheek-bones.”  “See how my head shoots up in the middle!” laughing vociferously all the time at their own jokes.  They readily perceive any defect in each other, and give nicknames accordingly.  One man came alone to have a quiet gaze at his own features once, when he thought I was asleep; after twisting his mouth about in various directions, he remarked to himself, “People say I am ugly, and how very ugly I am indeed!”