ANTHROPOLOGY. 
431 
ancestor worship, or the deification of some tribe- 
founder. 
One other incident may be mentioned about the 
Wa-taita before I leave them. Their marriages are 
arranged first by purchase, the intended husband pay¬ 
ing the father of the girl the three or more cows fixed 
as the price. When these preliminaries are settled the 
girl runs away and affects to hide. She is sought out 
by the bridegroom and three or four of his friends. 
When she is found, the men seize her and carry her off 
to the hut of her future husband, generally each man 
holding a limb, so that she is supported by four men 
including the bridegroom. On arriving at their des¬ 
tination, being accompanied on the way by bands of 
laughing girls and women, she enters the hut with her 
four captors, and each in turn is allowed to exercise 
a peculiarly marital privilege. Then having been in 
this strange manner repaid for their services, they 
leave her to the exclusive possession of her husband. 
She remains with him for three days, then is escorted 
back to her father’s house by another procession, and 
finally returns to her future home to take up the cares 
and duties of domestic life. 
The language of the Wa-taita is about intermediate 
between the dialects of the coast and those of Caga. 
The A-kamba, who live on a broad stretch of 
country to the north of Taita nearly to the base of 
Kenia, are the neighbours of the Gallas on the coast. 
They are very roving, colonizing people, and great 
hunters. I have seen many of them at Taveita, 
whither they would bring rhinoceros horns and dried 
rhinoceros flesh for sale. These are on the whole a 
good-looking race, and I was surprised to find in many 
that the hair, though short, is straight, which together 
