744 BANTU NEGROES 



over his body to prevent the spirit of the deceased from worrying the man 

 bv whom he has been slain. When people are killed in warfare, the 

 victorious side endeavours to secure the bodies. The young warriors of 

 the tribe who are just beginning to bear arms are encouraged to stab 

 the bodies repeatedly with their spears so that they may become hardened 

 to the sight of death and blood. 



The rivers of the Kavirondo country are not usually very navigable. 

 Where there are no bridges ferrying is done in large dug-out canoes, which 

 are obtained from the forests on the Nandi Escarpment. These dug-out 

 canoes are usually punted across or along a stream by poles. The canoes 

 used on the lake by the Nyara folk, who are the westernmost branch of the 

 Kavirondo, resemble those of Uganda, but are less cleverly made. The 

 Kavirondo people do not shine as navigators. En revanche, they are better 

 bridge-builders perhaps than the other races of the Protectorate. Their 

 country, unlike Uganda, contains broad and turbulent streams, one or 

 two of which are very considerable rivers. These rivers are bridged in 

 two different ways. There is a suspension bridge cleverly slung from 

 a big tree on one bank to an equally big tree opposite. On either side 

 a ladder leads from the ground to the forking of the tree-trunk, from 

 which the suspended bridge hangs. These bridges are really composed 

 of huge ropes of twisted creepers, from which depends perpendicularly 

 a network of bast on either side, and a footway of basketwork, over which 

 often thin planks and slabs of wood are placed. These suspension bridges 

 require constant care, owing to the rapidity with which the fibre of the 

 creeper-ropes rots. They are, therefore, dangerous and uncertain. The 

 other kind of bridge is made by driving two rows of stout piles into 

 the bed of the river from bank to bank, with two or three or more in- 

 tervals. The space between the piles is filled up with reedwork, grass, 

 stones, sticks, and mud until a rough kind of dyke, or barrier, crosses the 

 stream, with a sufficient number of intervals to allow of the water passing. 

 The upper surface of this dyke is made passable by logs being thrown 

 down on top of the rubbish. Logs also bridge the intervals, and in these 

 intervals fish-baskets are placed. It is difficult to tell sometimes which is 

 the main object in constructing these bridges — the maintenance of a fish 

 weir or the securing of safe transit across a crocodile-haunted stream. Some- 

 times these bridges are a zigzag series of stone dykes made of rough 

 masonry similar to the stone fish weirs. 



Before the institution of a European Administration, the roads in 

 Kavirondo were nothing but the narrow African path running from village 

 to village. However careful people may have been to bridge the streams, 

 or to establish canoe ferries, they never made any attempt to construct 

 causeways over marshes, or to clear their paths of exuberant vegetation. 



