584 



BANTU NEGROES 



dug-out canoes, some of which in times past were unusually large, with 

 room for seventy men as rowers and passengers. The Banyoro also 

 construct rude rafts of bundles of papyrus. These serve the purpose of 

 crossing small sluggish streams, being punted across the water with a 

 long pole. The canoe-making industry, however, has quite died out 

 lately in nearly every part of Unyoro, except the southern province of 

 that kingdom, which is now annexed to Uganda. Likewise but little 

 hunting is carried on in this country at the present time, since the 

 population has been decimated by civil wars. Former methods for 



328. CHIEFS OF MBOGA (A TERRITORY WEST OF THE SEMLIKI RIVER) 



slaying big beasts such as elephants were the game-pit and the heavily 

 loaded harpoon, which was suspended by a cord across the road along 

 which elephants, hippopotamuses, or buffaloes would travel. It was 

 formerly the custom for a hunter to perch on a tree overhanging one 

 of these beast-roads, which traverse the bush in all directions. In this 

 position he would hold a heavy spear ready to send it with force into the 

 back of the animal behind the shoulders. Mr. George Wilson, when 

 collector in Unyoro, was assured by the Chiops hunters in the northern 

 part of that district that expert hunters were accustomed to catch puff- 

 adders in a noose. They then nailed the living snake by the tip of its- 



