WESTWARD TO LAKE VICTORIA NYANZA 125 
handsomely formed negroes and negresses without a shred of cloth¬ 
ing, though with many adornments in the way of hippopotamus teeth, 
bead necklaces, earrings, and leglets of brass. They are very pictur¬ 
esque as they .strut about the streets in their innocent nudity, decked 
with barbaric ornaments. 
“The men wear not one earring, but fifteen! Holes are pierced 
all round the outer edge of the ear, and in these are inserted brass 
fillets, like melon seeds in shape, to which are attached coarse blue 
beads of large size and dull appearance. These beads the knowing 
tourist should collect while they can be purchased, as they are of 
mysterious origin and great interest. They have apparently reached 
this part of the world from Nubia in some very ancient trading inter¬ 
course between Egypt and these countries of the upper Nile. As the 
figures thus exhibited are usually models for a sculptor, this nudity 
is blameless and not to be discouraged; moreover, it characterizes 
the most moral people in the Uganda protectorate. 
“This ebon statuary lives in pretty little villages, which are clus¬ 
ters of straw huts (glistening gold in the sun’s rays), encircled with 
fences of aloes, which have red, green, and white mottled leaves, and 
beautiful columns and clusters of coral-red stalks and flowers. There 
are a few shady trees that from their appearance might very well be 
elms but are not, and some extraordinary euphorbias, which grow 
upright with the trunk of a respectable tree and burst into uncounted 
sickly green spidery branches. Herds of parti-colored goats and 
sheep, and cattle that are black and white and fawn color, diversify 
these surroundings with their abrupt patches of light and color. 
“They belong to the better class of Bantu negroes, of that 
immense group of African peoples which has dominated the whole 
southern third of Africa from the regions of the White Nile and 
Victoria Nyanza to the upper Congo, Kamarun, Zanzibar and Zulu- 
land.” 
