The Ethnology and Climatology of Central Africa. 213 
etc., the clothing is either constructed so as to shield the 
body from atmospheric influences or from external violence. 
Turning to communal or tribal life, we find that in Central 
Africa all stages of development, from the family to the 
kingdom, are represented, and it is interesting to see the 
various stages out of which a state is evolved. Jirst, we 
have the families grouped into villages, a village containing 
a group of families akin to one another. The people have 
found that a certain amount of order must be maintained; 
and therefore they elect a headman, who rules their small 
domain, whose word is law, and who, perhaps, combines 
with this communal headship priestly functions. In other 
districts we notice that villages become larger, and that the 
headman has two or three assistants to help him. We then 
come to villages banded together, owing to the inroads of 
neighbouring communities, and forming tribes, each with its 
own ruler, who lives in the largest village, and to whom all 
living in the surrounding area owe vassalage. Passing 
higher in our investigations, we come to kingdoms like that 
of Uganda, where the original village chief has attained to 
kingly rank, where hereditary chiefs support his authority, 
and where not only a small group of villages but an immense 
district is formed into one consolidated whole, with a popula- 
tion of some five or six million. And such a kingdom as 
this reminds one forcibly of what Great Britain was in the 
days of the feudal system. The constitution both of families 
and tribes and even kingdoms seemed based on the idea of 
a circle. In the family the father with his hut forms the 
centre; around it we have the huts of his wives and infants 
and children; around them again the grown-up children build 
their dwellings; and the same process goes on until we get 
the great chief, and surrounding him circles and circles of 
families and subdivisions of the tribe. In a kingdom such 
as Uganda a systematised government obtains; the king is 
his own minister of war; he has a council of war; each 
district is governed by a military officer; and each man 
capable of bearing arms is bound to answer the call, first of 
his chief, then of his district chief, and lastly of his king. 
These military functionaries in Uganda also administer the 
