360 



THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



where every man shirks the least trouble. When there 

 has been no tirikeza, when provisions have been 

 plentiful, and when there is a bright moonshine, which 

 seems to enliven these people like jackals, a furious 

 drumming, a loud clapping of hands, and a general 

 droning song, summon the lads and the lasses of the 

 neighbouring villages to come out and dance and " make 

 love." The performance is laborious, but these Africans, 

 like most men of little game, soon become too tired to work, 

 but not too tired to play and amuse themselves. Their 

 style of salutation is remarkable only for the excessive 

 gravity which it induces; at no other time does the 

 East African look so serious, so full of earnest purpose. 

 Sometimes a single dancer, the village buffoon, foots 

 a pas seal, featly, with head, arms, and legs, bearing 

 strips of hair-garnished cow-skin, which are waved, 

 jerked, and contorted, as if dislocation had occurred to 

 his members. At other times, a line or a circle of boys 

 and men is formed near the fire, and one standing in 

 the centre, intones the song solo, the rest humming a 

 chorus in an undertone. The dancers plumbing and 

 tramping to the measure with alternate feet, simul- 

 taneously perform a treadmill exercise with a heavier 

 stamp at the end of every period : they are such timists, 

 that a hundred pair of heels sound like one. At first 

 the bodies are slowly swayed from side to side, presently 

 as excitement increases, the exercise waxes severe : 

 they " cower down and lay out their buttocks," to use 

 pedantic Ascham's words, " as though they would shoot 

 at crows ;" they bend and recover themselves, and they 

 stoop and rise to the redoubled sound of the song and 

 the heel-music, till the assembly, with arms waving 

 like windmills, assumes the frantic semblance of a 

 ring of Egyptian Darwayshes. The performance often 



