748 BANTU NEGROES 



allows herself to be captured. This act of violence is only resorted to if 

 the girl's father is avaricious. If a girl is not asked in marriage, she will 

 often go off and offer herself to a man of another village; and if he 

 accepts her. her mother arrives after a few days and negotiates for the 

 payment of a marriage gift. In the Kavirondo country women are 

 probablv in excess of men. Mr. Hobley states that in some of the 

 Kavirondo tribes, though the cattle of the marriage gift became the 

 propertv of the wife's father, all the cows to which they give birth are 

 supposed to belong to his son-in-law, and must be handed over to him, or 

 to bis heirs after his death. 



The women are prolific, and the birth of twins is not an uncommon 

 occurrence. This is considered an extremely lucky event, and is 

 celebrated by an obscene dance, which, however, is only lewd in its 

 stereotyped gestures, and does not, so far as I know, result in actual 

 immorality. The mother of twins must remain seven days in her house 

 before crossing the threshold. After the birth of a child a goat is killed, 

 and the mother eats some of the meat. Very little other ceremony takes 

 place, and if a single child is born the mother goes out again to her work 

 in the plantations three or four days after the event. There is much 

 mortality amongst the children, and it frequently occurs that a woman 

 loses all her offspring one after the other. When this has been the case 

 the next child that is born of her is taken out at dawn and placed on 

 the road, to be left there until a neighbour should pick it up and bring 

 it back. This office is usually performed by some friendly woman who has 

 a hint to walk in that direction. This woman must receive the present 

 of a goat before she surrenders the child, of which she is henceforth 

 considered to be the foster-mother. Names may be employed indifferently 

 for a male or female child, a girl often taking her father's name. 



The Kavirondo profess to be able to tell the sex of an unborn child 

 if the mother is pregnant for the first time. If the child is going to be 

 a girl, the mother remains fat; if it is going to be a boy, she gets thin. 

 If the mother lias borne children before, her last child is watched whilst 

 the mother is pregnant, and if this child be a boy and waxes thin, then 

 the coming child will be a girl, or vice versa. But if the coining child 

 is to be of the same sex as the one which has preceded it, the preceding 

 child remains fat. 



As regards the disposal of the body after death, it may be stated that 

 all the Bantu Kavirondo bury their dead, and do not expose them in the 

 bush to be devoured by hyasnas and vultures. A chief or a person of 

 importance is buried in the floor of his own hut in a sitting position, but 

 only at such a depth that the head may easily protrude above the surface 

 of the ground. The earth is filled in up to the neck of the corpse and 



