22 



THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



waist to knee. Maidens never cover the breast, and 

 children are rarely clothed ; the infant, as usual in East 

 Africa, is carried in a skin fastened by thongs behind 

 the parent's back. The favourite ornaments are beads, 

 of which the red coral, the pink, and the "pigeon-eggs" 

 made at Nuremberg are preferred. From the neck 

 depend strings of beads with kiwangwa, disks of shell 

 brought from the coast, and crescents of hippopotamus 

 teeth country made, and when the beard is long it is 

 strung with red and particoloured beads. Brass and 

 copper bangles or massive rings are worn upon the 

 wrists, the forearm bears the ponderous kitindi or coil 

 bracelet, and the arm above the elbow is sometimes de- 

 corated with circlets of ivory or with a razor in an ivory 

 etui ; the middle is girt with a coil of wire twisted 

 round a rope of hair or fibre, and the ankles are covered 

 with small iron bells and the rings of thin brass, copper, 

 or iron wire, called sambo. When travelling, a goat's 

 horn, used as a bugle, is secured over the right shoulder 

 by a lanyard and allowed to hang by the left side : in 

 the house many wear a smaller article of the same kind, 

 hollowed inside and containing various articles intended 

 as charms, and consecrated by the Mganga or medicine- 

 man. The arms are slender assegais with the shoulders 

 of the blade rounded off : they are delivered, as by the 

 Somal, with the thumb and forefinger after a preliminary 

 of vibratory motion, but the people want the force 

 and the dexterity of the Kafirs. Some have large 

 spears for thrusting, and men rarely leave the hut 

 without their bows and arrows, the latter unpoisoned, 

 but curiously and cruelly barbed. They make also the 

 long double-edged knives called sime, and different 

 complications of rungu or knob-kerries, some of them 

 armed with an iron lance-head upon the wooden bulge. 



