BANTU NEGEOES 719 



guilt was discovered, he and she were sent at night time to Kaluba's 

 village, where they were tied to a tree. This tall spreading incense- 

 tree was thought to be under the protection of a spirit called Kakua- 

 Kambuzi. Next morning the erring couple were discovered by people 

 in the surrounding plantations, who released them. They were then 

 allowed to settle near the tree of the protecting spirit. Curiously 

 enough, the Busoga also held in great abhorrence anything like incest 

 amongst domestic animals —that is to say, they greatly disapproved of 

 intercourse between a bull calf and its mother-cow, or between a bull 

 and a cow that were known to be brother and sister. If this occurred, 

 the bull and cow were sent by night to a fetish tree and tied there. 

 The next morning the chief of the district appropriated the animals and 

 turned them to his own use. The rain spirit of Busoga — a country 

 which, in spite of its dense forests, suffers more often from severe 

 droughts than does Uganda — is a most important personage among the 

 gods. Another important " lubare " is Takwe, who dwells in the River 

 Ntahwe, and personifies that stream. If immorality occurred between a 

 man and a virgin, and as the result the girl became enceinte, the lapse 

 from morality was punished more severely than if nothing had resulted 

 from their intercourse. In this last case the guilty couple were dragged 

 off to the River Ntakwe, stones were tied to their ankles and legs, and, 

 in company with a sacrificial sheep, they were thrown into the river to be 

 drowned. This custom was abolished even before European intervention^ 

 and reduced to the much milder penalty of a fine inflicted on the man. 



In other sub-divisions of Busoga than Bukole the same mutilations as 

 those described in connection with the fetish drum were inflicted on a 

 boy and a girl in order to make a sacrifice to the sacred stream on the 

 occasion of a chief's death. When this was done at Sibondo's town the 

 mutilated boy and girl were afterwards thrown into the River Nagua as 

 a sacrifice to the water spirit. 



With regard to the association of tall and remarkable trees with spirit- 

 worship, an eye-witness gives me the following account of what he saw 

 near the native town of Luba, in Western Busoga (near Fort Thruston). 

 The tree which is regarded as sacred in this locality was a lofty and 

 unusually fine species of Parinariuvi. Its cylindrical, glossy white trunk 

 rose to 100 feet in height before giving out branches. The tree was 

 surrounded by small fetish huts and curious arcades and " extinguishers," 

 or pendent umbrellas of straw. The Basoga at the time had been 

 suffering from hunger, as the dry season was nearing its end and the 

 new crops were not yet ripe. They came in canoes decorated as if on 

 a warlike expedition, the prows of the canoes being strung with wreathes of 

 flowers (chiefly yellow acacia blossom). When the occupants of the canoes 



