BANTU NEGROES 693 



The society to which they belong is a secret one, and is naturally held in 

 great abhorrence by the saner majority. The natives of the Sese Islands 

 have an ill fame among their fellow Baganda of the mainland as suspected 

 cannibals. " Cannibalism " during late years has been so severely put 

 down by the Baganda chiefs and sub-chiefs, whose administration of the 

 Sese Islands has recently been strengthened by European support, that it 

 is practically extinct there now ; but many stories are still told of the 

 ogreish feats of the Basese. It will be related how such and such a 

 Musese would conceal himself in the foliage of a branch which overhung 

 a road, holding a heavily weighted spear upright in his hand ready to 

 send it like a harpoon between the shoulders of an unsuspecting passer- 

 by, whose body he would afterwards remove to his village and devour. 

 The Basese are accused of carrying off sick people into the bush and 

 knocking them on the head so that they may not actually die of a 

 malady, and thus render themselves less suited for consumption as food. 

 Monseigneur Streicher informs me that he knows a Musese peasant who 

 killed his wife on the wedding night because she refused to cook the 

 thigh of a man buried the night before, which her husband had dug up 

 as a toothsome morsel for his marriage supper. 



Death. — When a native is sick for some time, and his case does not 

 yield to the treatment given by the local quacks or " basawo," he is 

 removed to another house, and other remedies are applied. Any friend 

 who has a recognised "mixture" of his own may bring it for tiial on the 

 sick man. If the result is not satisfactory it is discontinued, and another 

 friend tries his mixture. And so on. 



If the patient dies, the dead body is washed — not with water— but with 

 the spongy pulp of the stem of the banana-tree. Muhammadanised Baganda 

 wash their dead with water, but the real Uganda native always uses the 

 pulp of banana stems. 



If the dead man is the head of a family, a frame is made in the 

 centre of his hut, and short pieces of banana stems (called " Sanja ") are 

 placed across the frame, making a rude sort of couch about eighteen 

 inches above the floor. Bark-cloth is spread on this framework, and the 

 corpse is stretched on this, and a few pieces of bark-cloth are spread over 

 it. The head wife, in case of her death, can also claim to have a frame 

 made in the centre of the hut, but the ordinary members of the family, 

 the sons or daughters or subsidiary wives, cannot be accorded this mark 

 of distinction when they die. The head wife is called " kabedya." The 

 corpse frame in the case of the junior members of the family must be 

 erected along one of the side walls of the hut. 



The period between death and interment varies from a few hours to a 

 few days. Generally, as soon as the relations are come together, they dig 



