WESTWARD TO LAKE VICTORIA NYANZA 125 



handsomely formed negroes and negresses without a shred of cloth- 

 ing, though with many adornments in the way of hippopotamus teeth, 

 bead necklaces, earrings, and leglets of brass. They are very pictur- 

 esque as they strut about the streets in their innocent nudity, decked 

 with barbaric ornaments. 



"The men wear not one earring, but fifteen! Holes are pierced 

 all round the outer edge of the ear, and in these are inserted brass 

 fillets, like melon seeds in shape, to which are attached coarse blue 

 beads of large size and dull appearance. These beads the knowing 

 tourist should collect while they can be purchased, as they are of 

 mysterious origin and great interest. They have apparently reached 

 this part of the world from Nubia in some very ancient trading inter- 

 course between Egypt and these countries of the upper Nile. As the 

 figures thus exhibited are usually models for a sculptor, this nudity 

 is blameless and not to be discouraged; moreover, it characterizes 

 the most moral people in the Uganda protectorate. 



"This ebon statuary lives in pretty little villages, which are clus- 

 ters of straw huts (glistening gold in the sun's rays), encircled with 

 fences of aloes, vvhich have red, green, and white mottled leaves, and 

 beautiful columns and clusters of coral-red stalks and flowers. There 

 are a few shady trees that from their appearance might very well be 

 elms but are not, and some extraordinary euphorbias, which grow 

 upright with the trunk of a respectable tree and burst into uncounted 

 sickly green spidery branches. Herds of parti-colored goats and 

 sheep, and cattle that are black and white and fawn color, diversify 

 these surroundings with their abrupt patches of light and color. 



"They belong to the better class of Bantu negroes, of that 

 immense group of African peoples which has dominated the whole 

 southern third of Africa from the regions of the White Nile and 

 Victoria Nyanza to the upper Congo, Kamarun, Zanzibar and Zulu- 

 land." 



