- 16 - 
tribe, and announced that he was afraid to sleep alone because of 
the leopards* I assumed that he meant real leopards, and wondered 
how much protection our mosquito nets were going to be to us, but it 
seems that he meant the Leopard Society, which is an outlawed band 
of professional murderers* They make raids from time to time, kill 
their victim, tear out his heart, cut off one toe and part of a finger, 
and leave the remains by the roadside* athsnsxkateux Interesting 
tabus in Balala are that it is forbidden here to blow a whistle in 
the village or to eat a chimpanzee* 
March 22 - 
We were up before five o ’clock, and were swinging across a 
high bridge in the misty light of early morning* Although it 
begins to be daylight about five thirty, and is light at six, the 
sun never gets above the tall trees of the surrounding jungle before 
S • 
My hammock carriers are the speed demons of the outfit, and 
go yodelling through the jungle with such a racket that there is 
no chance of ever seeing any forest life. Occasionally a monkey 
can be seen disturbing the branches of a distant tree, end birds 
of course are plentiful, but no antelope or buffalo comes within 
a mile of our noisy caravan. If another hammock gets in front 
of mine on the road my boys are miserable until they pass it, so that 
I always get into a town first, and have to sit under a tree or 
in the palaver kitchen until the rest of the party catches up with 
me. We stopped in one little village about lunch time, after be ing 
carried across a wide river, and ate lunch under a big mango tree. 
Here we saw a woman spinning for the first time, with a wodden 
spindle which she spins like a top beside her with one hand, while 
the other hand patiently pulls out into strands the fuzzy balls of 
cotton. All the men and women have tribal cicatrices, the women 
having an elaborate criss-cross pattern all over the abdomen and 
across the small of the back. The women wear a high and peculiar 
head-dress, that consists of black string braided into their own 
hair and built out a foot long; strings of black rope or hair 
hang down on each side of the face; cowrie shells nd decorate the 
part of the head dress that is allowed to show, but most of it is 
covered with a bit of cotton print. The head dress is given to them 
when they finish their two years in the bush school and are iniated 
into their secret society; they wear it for two years after their 
return to the village - which seems like a long time to go without 
combing or washing your hair. The piece of cloth tied over it 
is of course intended to keep it clean* 
We bo "ught coconuts, bananas and pineapples along the road, and 
landed in Digain, our stop for the night, about two o ’clock. I was 
ahead as usual, and had to shake hands with the Chief, who tried 
most unsuccessfully to snap fingers with me according to local custom. 
As soon as J and Si arrived I made them teach me how to do iti 
In other villages we had seen women with white clay painted on 
their faces, but here the women had all the exposed part of their 
body, which Is considerable, painted dead white with this river clay. 
As our caravan came Into the village and I was looking with amaze- 
ment at this reversal of an American minstrel show, to my great 
