BANTU NEGROES 745 



Their paths were simply made by people walking single-file from one point 

 to another. 



Their industries are simple. Salt is made by burning reeds and water- 

 plants, and passing water through the ashes. The water is then boiled and 

 strained, and a rough grey salt is the result. Iron ore is smelted in the hills, 

 and the Samia Hills on the borderland between Kavirondo and Busoga yield 

 iron ore of excellent quality. The Kavirondo blacksmiths use a bellows 

 which is made out of a whole log of wood converging to a point. This 

 point is inserted into a clay funnel. The log is really the section of the 

 trunk of a small tree cut above and below its bifurcation. The two bifffifest 

 branches are retained, and when the whole of the wood has been hollowed 

 out it gives a central pipe with two branches. At the end of the 

 openings of the branches a goat skin is loosely fastened. This skin is 

 puckered up into a point in the middle, to which is fastened the end of 

 a long, light stick. Each of these sticks being worked with a piston 

 action, the air is sent through the central tube and the clay nozzle 

 into the glowing charcoal. The chief things made out of the smelted 

 iron are spear-blades, hoes, axes, adzes, arrow-heads, finger-rings, knives, 

 and bells. 



Pottery is made with a certain amount of skill from black and red 

 clay, but not much sense of beauty is displayed in the shapes, which 

 are commonplace and purely utilitarian. Basketwork is amongst their 

 industries. It is plaited grass as a rule. I have not noticed any mats 

 in their possession, the people preferring to use skins. They will some- 

 times wear a huge ox hide which is still very stiff, and has none of 

 the suppleness of the beautifully dressed skins of Uganda. The only 

 manufacture of this kind winch is in some ways peculiar to the whole 

 of the Kavirondo people from Elgon on the north to the Shashi country 

 on the south is a goat or sheep skin that has been made perfectly 

 supple on the under side by rubbing with fat and sand, while the hair 

 aspect has been boldly decorated tvith poker patterns done with a red-hot 

 iron or glowing stick. Sometimes these patterns are cut with a knife. 

 In any case the effect is striking and sometimes artistic, as the unhurnt 

 hair stands up in bold relief against the pattern of smooth skin. 



The Bantu Kavirondo are divided at the present day into a number 

 of very distinct tribes, and these again are minutely sub-divided into 

 clans. Leaving out of consideration the isolated Masaba people on the 

 western flanks of Elgon (whose language, though akin to the Kavirondo 

 dialects, possesses remarkable and peculiar features of its own), the principal 

 tribal divisions of the Kavirondo into clans or families are the following: 

 On the south-west there are the Banyala, who occupy the country 

 between the Samia Hills and the River Sio to the coast at the mouth 



