216 Rev. J. Roscoe. Preliminary Report of the 



day of the ceremony they undergo strenuous exertion, and are fortified for 

 the ordeal by a special meal and native beer. After this they take the oath 

 of tribal allegiance by jumping upon an- egg, and then stand as though 

 unconscious of any pain, while the operator saws, with a large knife, the 

 flesh from the wliole of the member and casts it under the youth's feet. 

 (Figs. 9, 10, Plate 16.) 



These Bagesu do not bury their dead, because they think the ghost will 

 kill the children of the family should they allow the body to decay. The 

 corpse is thrown out after dark, when men go out with trumpets made of 

 gourds and imitate the cry of jackals ; meanwhile a number of old women 

 proceed to cut up and carry back the corpse into the hut of mourning. 

 There, during the following three days, the mourners eat the body and wail. 



From the Bagesu we proceeded up Mount Elgon,' round to the most north- 

 easterly point, to investigate the caves which are said to have been inhabited 

 formerly. These caves are still used from time to time ; we visited three of 

 them, but could find no traces of permanent habitation. Eeport says that, 

 before the British occupation, they were used frequently as places of refuge 

 during any raids made by people from the north. The raiders were evidently 

 Turkana and Abyssinian s. 



While on Mount Elgon the customs of the Sabei were studied, and I 

 witnessed some of their marriage dances. A discovery was made with 

 regard to the two sets of pastoral peoples, both of them evidently from the 

 same Hamitic stock. Here was the dividing line : the Masai, Turkana, 

 Nandi, and Somali tribes have the rite of circumcision when the youths are 

 initiated, and the women undergo a corresponding rite ; whereas the pastoral 

 people in the south will not submit to any such mutilations. These two 

 sets of people are also most hostile the one to the other. The pastoral 

 people of the south seem to be the older immigrants. 



On the upper parts of the mountain there was found to be a tribe of 

 trappers living, whose diet is mainly moles and rats and the young shoots of 

 bamboo. They obtain a certain amount of grain by barter with members of 

 other tribes in exchange for their dried mole flesh. 



Eetracing my steps to Mbale, the Government station for the district, 

 I found, before descending to the lower slopes of the mountain, a tribe who 

 call themselves Bakama. The name interested me, and I set to work to 

 investigate who they were. I found them to be an offshoot of Bunyoro smiths, 

 who had migrated and adopted the customs of the mountain pastorals, with 

 whom they intermarried, thus becoming a separate clan of those people. 



The expedition then passed to the east of Mount Elgon, in company with 

 the Provincial Commissioner, and came round to Jinja. While in Busoga it 



