THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

They ate raw meat, shaved their heads and filed their teeth to sharp points.  They learned to fire from the shoulder not the hip, and never to fire at rustling leaves.  On exercises they were made to scale palisades of prickly pear, and they would come back clamouring, ‘Hou! Hou! We are men!’ – and since they were obliged to be celibate, were allowed to slake their lusts on a troop of female prostitutes.

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He crossed burning savannahs and swam rivers infested with crocodiles.  Before an attack on a village, he would lash leaves to his hat and lie motionless till cockcrow.  Then, as the dawn silhouetted the roofs like teeth on a sawblade, a whistle would blow, the air fill with raucous cries and, by the end of the morning, the Amazons would be parading before the King, swinging severed heads like dumb-bells.

Chatwin/Ouidah