640 BANTU NEGROES 



with the Bahima, In the royal family of Uganda the features are quite 

 negro (though in a pleasant form), and the skin is a peculiar golden 

 brown. The hair of the head, if allowed to grow, becomes very thick, but 

 it is usually cut short. There is a moderate growth of hair on the body, 

 much the same as in the West African Negroes. 



The Baganda never circumcise unless they are converted to Muhainma- 

 danism. Before the advent of Islam, the teaching of which began to 

 penetrate the country about forty years ago, there were, of course, no 

 circumcised men amongst the Baganda. They had. indeed, a great dislike 

 to this rite; and it was possibly the imposition of circumcision which in 

 the earlier days made Muhanirnadanism so unpopular, and which to a 

 great extent has kept it from spreading at the present day. Likewise the 

 Baganda neither knock out their front teeth nor sharpen them to points, 

 as is done by the forest tribes, the Banyoro, and the Nilotic Negroes ; nor 

 clo they drill or mutilate the ears, or cicatrise the body with raised scars. 



It would almost seem as though the Baganda had lost much of their 

 original vigour as a race through the effects of former debauchery and the 

 appalling ravages caused among them by syphilis. It is difficult to over- 

 estimate the damage done by 1 1 lis last disease. The French Bishop, 

 Monseigneur Streicher, writing to the author of this book, describes this 

 disease as " une plaie desastreuse pour le pays" Dr. Cook, of the Church 

 Missionary Society, in one of his reports to the Bishop of Uganda in 1901. 

 remarked. " In Uganda syphilis is universal." So far as can be ascertained, 

 this plague did not exist in the country until communications were opened 

 up with the Zanzibar coast-lands and with the Sudan provinces of Egypt 

 between 1850 and I860. It would be rash to say that the malady was 

 unknown to the country before these dates, but it was certainly introduced 

 in a new and ravaging form by the Arabs and Nubians. Now it is becoming 

 somewhat more benign, but is appearing in a congenital form amongst the 

 children. Mothers do not recognise this malady when it breaks out in their 

 offspring, but attribute it to the results of their having eaten salt during 

 pregnancy. If the child dies of this disease, the mother is beaten, as it is 

 taken to be her fault. Monseigneur Streicher. who knows intimately the 

 Banyoro and Baganda. informs me that although this same terrible disease is 

 equally present in Unvoro. it does not appear among the children. 



The same authority has drawn the present writer's attention repeatedly 

 to the stationary character of the Baganda population at the present day. 

 The Kingdom of Uganda in the time of Mutesa, though then of smaller 

 extent politically than at the present day, probably numbered 4.000,000 

 people. In 1901 I was not able to estimate the population at much over 

 1,000,000. This decrease is partly due to the appalling bloodshed and 

 massacres which went on between 1860 and 1898 and were caused bv the 



