136 THE SEMLIKI VALLEY 



recent times a great distance farther to the south 

 than it does at present. Every year, as the land 

 outside the forest becomes exhausted, more trees 

 are cut down, and fresh clearings are made, and so 

 slowly but surely the forest is encroached upon and 

 dwindles. The villages at the edge of the forest are 

 usually small — ten or a dozen huts at the most, 

 arranged often in the form of a square, enclosing an 

 open space, which is commonly used for drying 

 maize and millet and other kinds of food. One side 

 of the square is often occupied by the club-house, 

 which is larger than the other huts, and built upon 

 unthatched walls, so that the gossips inside the club 

 have a clear view of all that goes on outside. In 

 the club-houses the men-folk of the village seem to 

 spend a good deal of their time ; tobacco and pipes 

 are kept for the use of the community, and there is 

 usually a pot of food simmering on the undying fire. 

 In some of these houses we found luxurious seats 

 made of reeds, constructed almost exactly on the 

 model of a kind of garden-seat commonly seen in 

 England. But the more usual form of chair is 

 made of a straight piece of wood, which breaks into 

 three branches at one end (see illustration, p. 144). 

 The black possessor of one of these easy-chairs is a 

 proud man, and he often succeeds in looking comfort- 

 able when he reclines upon it, but to the European 

 anatomy the chair is a source of grief and pain. 



After coming from Uganda, where the natives 

 are not allowed to carry weapons, it was strange to 



