Liberia ^ 



dracasna. The skin is lubricated with oil. On the other hand 

 they are disgusting in dealing with head parasites (lice). These 

 accumulate in the head-hair of the women, shielded by their 

 elaborate coiffures. Every few weeks a woman friend examines 

 the heads of her friends and removes and eats the lice, which 

 are esteemed a delicacy. 



The Ne2;roes of Liberia range in their ideas of clothing 

 from the European vestments of British civilisation and the 

 ample garments of the Mandingo, Vai, and Gora to the almost 

 complete nudity of some of the interior tribes of Kru stock 

 in the eastern portion of the country (Cavalla Basin). Whether 

 there are any tribes within the limits ot Liberia that are abso- 

 lutely nude in one or other sex after maturity is an unsettled 

 point. Captain d'Ollone in his book refers to compUte nudity 

 on the part of the women — perhaps the unmarried women is 

 meant — in some of the interior Kru tribes. Nudity in women 

 is a somewhat common feature in the life of Western Africa 

 from Eastern Liberia to the Cameroons. The present writer 

 can remember even as late as 1888 that adult but unmarried 

 women and girls at such comparatively civilised places as Bonny 

 (Niger Delta) and Bell Town (Duali, Cameroons), besides the 

 interior regions of the Cross River, affected absolute nudity 

 without any feeling of shame, and this custom continued to 

 prevail even when they were converts to Christianity. Married 

 women in the same regions usually wore some slight fragment 

 of clothing. 



In the Efik country behind Old Calabar complete nudity 

 amongst the men was not infrequently to be noticed in the 

 days before the British Protectorate had introduced European 

 ideas of decency ; but elsewhere in Western Africa the author 

 has never encountered within his own experience this entire 

 indifference to decency amongst male Negroes, though it is a 



954 



