BANTU NEGKOES 



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stalwart sons, each of whom has Ix'coinc the father of a lar^c faiiiilv ; .-o 

 that Luba, when he dies, will i)roba])ly be the proi(enitor of a thousand 

 children. Another old chief of Nilotic race in the nortii. J^iada, is now 

 past ninety, and is said to have been the father of a thousand children, 

 more or less. It has been, in fact, very much the custom in Jjuscxm for 

 the chiefs — who, being at all times well nourished, were well suited to be 

 "sires" — to im})ress all the young women of the district into their harims. 

 After a girl had borne one or two children the chief would marry her off 

 to his dependents or to his elder sons. Among the peasants infant 

 mortality is terrible. It is rare that a peasant woman succeeds in 

 rearing more than one child. The influence of the two missionary societies 

 in Busoga is restraining the excessive polygamy of the chiefs, and the 

 better conditions of life among the common jjeople which now pre\ail 

 under the European control of the country, are together equalising the 

 production of children, and will no doulit tend in time to a marked 

 increase in the population. 



AN AI-i;IMi CIIII.I' IX M'soi^A 



