[ Infanticide among the Jaga. ]
They rise in harvest, and invading some country, there stay as long as they find the palms, or other sufficient means of maintenance, and then seek new adventure. For they neither plant nor sow, nor breed up cattle, and, which is more, strange, they nourish up none of their own children, although they have ten or twenty wives a man, of the properest and comeliest slaves they can take. But when they are in travail they dig a hole in the earth, which presently receiveth in that dark prison of death the newborn creature, not yet made happy with the light of life. Their reason is that they will not be troubled with education, nor in their flitting wanderings be troubled with such cumbersome burthens.253
Once, a secret providence both punisheth the father’s wickedness, and preventeth a viperous generation, if that maybe a prevention where there is a succession without generation; and as Pliny saith of the Esseni (lib. v, c. 15), Gens æterna est in qua nepto nascitur. For of the conquered nations they [the Jaga] preserve the boys from ten to twenty years of age, and bring them up as the hope of their succession, like Negro-azimogli,254 with education fitting their designs. These wear a collar about their neck in token of slavery, until they bring an enemy’s head slain in battle, and then they are uncollared, free’d, and dignified with the title of soldiers; if one of them runs away he is killed and eaten; so that, hemmed in betwixt hope and fear, they grow very resolute and adventurous, their collars breeding shame, disdain, and desperate fury, till they redeem their freedom as you have heard.
Elembe,255 the great Iagge, brought with him twelve thousand of these cruel monsters from Sierra Liona, and after much mischief and spoil settled himself in Benguele,256 twelve degrees from the Zone southwards, and there breedeth and groweth into a nation. But Kelandula, sometime his page, proceeds in that beastly life before mentioned, and the people of Elembe, by great troops, run to him and follow his camp in hope of spoil.