Through Ruanda to Lake Kiwu 83 



After Raven's successful tour in the Bugoie Forest, on which 

 he had been accompanied by the Batwa people, he and I under- 

 took a boat journey to two small, easily accessible islands, which 

 at one time served the aboriginals as burial places, and, doubtless, 

 still do. We proposed to assist our anthropologist to obtain a 

 collection of skulls. We found skulls and skeletons there in 

 large numbers, and some of them had roots of trees growing 

 through them. One skull had roots spreading through both the 

 eye-sockets, and presented a very curious appearance. On the 

 smaller of the islands we discovered the corpse of a woman, 

 scarcely decomposed, and bound in a humped-up attitude to a 

 tree. One of the oarsmen averred that the woman had been 

 carried there after her death, yet we were not at all satisfied with 

 this assertion, as it is a notorious fact that unfaithful women 

 and girls in that country are surrendered to a living death before 

 confinement as the penalty of their infidelity. 



Weiss and Kirschstein joined us again via the mission station 

 of Njundo a few days later, after their exhausting but successful 

 survey and geological investigations. 



Both of them had found themselves in a critical position at 

 times, as in journeying from Mohasi to Kissenji they had used 

 a route which turns off into territory where the Watussi and the 

 European influence is not yet widespread. Weiss chose this 

 route in order to complete his surveys, in spite of the Resident's 

 advice to the contrary. He reported to me the following par- 

 ticulars : 



" The Wahutu here respected the authority of the Watussi 

 but little, and just as little did they want to have anything to 

 do with us (Europeans). In addition to this unconciliatory atti- 

 tude on their part, they happened to be celebrating their harvest 

 festival and were nearly always intoxicated, and, in consequence, 

 in very bellicose mood. All we required from them was provisions 

 for our caravan and a guide in return for good payment. 



" Our guide, whom we had commissioned from the last camp- 

 ing place, had been rendered incapable in consequence of his 

 having fallen in with a good friend on the road, whom he had 



