182 THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



to bear to each other the relation of patron and client, 

 patrician and plebeian. The Wahuma comprises the 

 rich, who sometimes possess 1000 head of cattle, and the 

 warriors, a militia paid in the milk of cows allotted to 

 their temporary use by the king. The Wanyambo — 

 Fellahs or Kyots — are, it is said, treated by the nobles 

 as slaves. The men of Karagwah are a tall stout race, 

 doubtless from the effect of pure mountain-air and 

 animal food. Corpulence is a beauty : girls are fattened 

 to a vast bulk by drenches of curds and cream thickened 

 with flour, and are duly disciplined when they refuse. 

 The Arabs describe them as frequently growing to a 

 monstrous size, like some specimens of female Boers 

 mentioned by early travellers in Southern Africa. 

 Fresh milk is the male, sour the female beverage. The 

 complexion is a brown yellow, like that of the Warundi. 

 The dress of the people, and even of the chiefs, is an 

 apron of close-grained mbugu, or bark-cloth, softened 

 with oil, and crimped with fine longitudinal lines made 

 with a batten or pounding club. In shape it resembles 

 the flap of an English saddle, tied by a prolongation of 

 the upper corners round the waist. To this scarcely 

 decent article the chiefs add a languti, or Indian- 

 T-bandage of goat's skin. Nudity is not uncommon, and 

 nubile girls assume the veriest apology for clothing, 

 which is exchanged after marriage for short kilts and 

 breast coverings of skin. Both sexes wear tiara-shaped 

 and cravat-formed ornaments of the crimson abrus-seed, 

 pierced and strung upon mondo, the fine fibre of the 

 mwale or raphia-palm. The weapons are bows and 

 arrows, spears, knobsticks, and knives ; the ornaments 

 are beads and coil-bracelets, which, with cattle, form 

 the marriage settlement. The huts are of the coni- 

 cal and circular African shape, with walls of stakes 



