CHAPTER XXXIII. THE TRIBES OF THE GRASS-LAND.

The Wahuma: the exact opposite of the Dwarfs: their descendants—Tribes nearly allied to the true negro type—Tribes of the Nilotic basin—The Herdsmen—The traditions of Unyoro—My experiences of the Wahuma gained while at Kavalli—View of the surrounding country from Kavalli camp—Chiefs Kavalli, Katto, and Gavira unbosom their wrongs to me—Old Ruguji’s reminiscences—The pasture-land lying between Lake Albert and the forest—The cattle in the district round Kavalli: their milk-yield—Three cases referring to cattle which I am called upon to adjudicate—Household duties of the women—Dress among the Wahuma—Old Egyptian and Ethiopian characteristics preserved among the tribes of the grass-land—Customs, habits, and religion of the tribes—Poor Gaddo suspected of conspiracy against his chief, Kavalli: his death—Diet of the Wahuma—The climate of the region of the grass-land.

1889.
July.
The
Wahuma.

The Wahuma are the most interesting people, next to the Pigmies in all Central Africa. Some philological nidderings have classed them under the generic name Bantu, and every traveller ambitious of being comprehended among the scientific, adds his testimony and influence to perpetuate this most unscientific term. Bantu is an Inner African word of which the translation is Men. We are therefore asked seriously to accept it as a solemn fact, upon scientific authority, that the Wahuma, like the Pigmies, are men.

The Wahuma are the exact opposite of the dwarfs. The latter are undersized nomads, adapted by their habits to forest life; the former are tall, finely-formed men, with almost European features, adapted from immemorial custom and second nature to life in pastoral lands only. Reverse their localities, and they pine and die. Take the Pigmies out of their arboreal recesses and perpetual twilight, and from their vegetable diet, and plant them on a grass-land open to the winds and the sunshine, feed them on beef and grain, and milk as you may, and they shrink with the cold and exposure, refuse their meat, and droop to death. On the other hand, deport the Wahuma into the woods, and supply them with the finest vegetables, and always with plenty of food, and the result is, that they get depressed, their fine brown-black colour changes into ashen gray, the proud haughty carriage is lost, they contract an aspect of misery, and die in despair and weariness. Yet these two opposites of humanity are called Bantu, or men, a term which is perfectly meaningless, and yet as old as the story of the Creation. In North America we see to-day Esquimaux, English, Irish, German, French and Spanish Americans, and Indians, and, after the scientific manner, we should call them Bantu. Interest in the various human families is not roused by comprehending them under such unphilosophical terms.

The Wahuma are true descendants of the Semitic tribes, or communities, which emigrated from Asia across the Red Sea and settled on the coast, and in the uplands of Abyssinia, once known as Ethiopia. From this great centre more than a third of the inhabitants of Inner Africa have had their origin. As they pressed southward and conquered the negro tribes, miscegenation produced a mixture of races; the Semitic became tainted with negro blood, the half-caste tribes inter-married again with the primitive race, and became still more degraded in feature and form, and in the course of ages lost almost all traces of their extraction from the Asiatic peoples. If a traveller only bears this fact in mind, and commences his researches from the Cape of Good Hope, he will be able easily, as he marches northward, to separate the less adulterated tribes from those who are so nearly allied to the true negro type as to bear classification as negroid. The kinky, woolly hair is common to all; but even in this there are shades of difference from that which is coarse almost as horse-hair, to that which rivals silken floss for fineness. The study of the hair may, however, be left; the great and engrossing study being the Caucasian faces under the negro hair. From among the Kaffirs, Zulus, Matabeles, Basutos, Bechuanas, or any other of the fierce South African tribes, select an ordinary specimen of those splendidly-formed tribes so ruthlessly denominated as negroes, and plant him near a West African, or Congoese, or Gabonese type, and place a Hindu between them, and having been once started on the right trail of discovery, you will at once perceive that the features of the Kaffir are a subtle amalgamation of the Hindu and West African types; but if we take a Mhuma of mature age, the relation to the Hindu will still more readily appear. Advancing across the Zambezi towards the watershed of the Congo and Loangwa, we observe among the tribes a confusion of types, which may be classed indifferently as being an intermediate family between the West African and the Kaffir; an improvement on the former, but not quite up to the standard of the latter. If we extend our travels east or west we will find this to be a far-spreading type. It embraces the Babisa, Barua, Balunda, and the tribes of the entire Congo basin; and to the eastward, Wachunga, Wafipa, Wakawendi, Wakonongo, Wanyamwezi, and Wasukuma. Among them, every now and then, we will be struck with the close resemblance of minor tribal communities to the finest Zulus, and near the eastern littoral we will see negroid West Africans reproduced in the Waiau, Wasagara, Wangindo, and the blacks of Zanzibar. When we return from the East Coast to the uplands bordering the Tanganika, and advance north as far as Ujiji, we will see the stature and facial type much improved. Through Ujiji we enter Urundi, and there is again a visible improvement. If we go east a few days we enter Uhha, and we are in the presence of twin-brothers of Zululand—tall, warlike creatures, with Caucasian heads and faces, but dyed darkly with the sable pigment. If we go east a little further, among those mixtures of pure negroes, with Kaffir type of ancient Ukalaganza, now called Usumbwa, we see a tall, graceful-looking herdsman with European features, but dark in colour. If we ask him what he is, he will tell us his occupation is herding cattle, and that he is a Mtusi, of the Watusi tribe. “Is there any country, then, called Utusi?” and he will answer “No; but he came from the north.” We advance to the north, and we find ourselves travelling along the spine of pastoral upland. We are in the Nilotic basin. Every streamlet trends easterly to a great inland sea called now the Victoria Nyanza, or westerly to the Albert Edward Nyanza. This upland embraces Ruanda, Karagwé, Mpororo, Ankori, Ihangiro, Uhaiya, and Uzongora, and all these tribes inhabiting those countries possess cattle; but the people are not all herdsmen. Many among them are devoted to agriculture. After journeying hither and thither, we are impressed with the fact that all those occupied with tending cattle are similar to that graceful Mtusi whom we met in Usumbwa, and who vaguely pointed to the north as his original home, and that all the agriculturists are as negroid in feature as any thick-lipped West Coast African. By dwelling among them, we also learn that the herdsmen regard those who till the soil with as much contempt as a London banking clerk would view the farm labourer. Still advancing to the north we behold an immense snowy range. It is an impassable barrier; we deflect our march to the west, and find this Mtusi type numerous, and stretching up to the foot of the mountains, and to dense, impenetrable forests unfit for the herding of cattle; and at once the Caucasian type ceases, and the negroid features, either coppery, black, or mixed complexion—the flat nose, the sunken ridge, and the projecting of the lower part of the face—are dumb witnesses that here the wave of superior races was arrested. We retrace our steps, ascend to the upland and skirt the snowy range eastward, and over a splendid grazing country called Toro, Uhaiyana, and Unyoro, we see the fine-featured herdsmen again in numbers attending their vast herds, and the dark flat-nosed negroid tilling the land with hoes, as we saw them further south. After passing the snowy range on its northern extremity, we proceed west across the flat grassy valley of the Semliki to other grassy uplands parallel with Unyoro, but separated from it by the Albert Nyanza; and over this pastoral region are living together, but each strictly adhering to his own pursuit, the herdsmen and the tillers of the soil. During our travels from Usumbwa the herdsmen have changed their names from Watusi to Wanyambu, Wahuma, Waima, Wawitu, and Wachwezi. That is, they have accepted these titles in the main from the agricultural class, but whether in Ankori, or among the Balegga and Bavira, or dwelling with the Waganda or in Unyoro, they call themselves Watusi, Wahuma, or Wachwezi. In Karagwé, Ankori, or Usongora, they are the dominating classes. Their descendants sit in the seat of power in Ihangiro, Uhaiya, Uganda, and Unyoro; but the people of these countries are an admixture of the Zulu and West African tribes, and therefore they are more devoted to agriculture. When, as for instance, tribes such as Waganda, Wasoga, and Wakuri have been left to grow up and increase in power and prosperity, we have but to look at the sea-like expanse of the Victoria Nyanza, and we see the reason of it. No further progress was possible, and the wave of migration passed westward and eastward, and overlapped these tribes, and in their progress southward dropped a few members by the way, to become absorbed by the members of the agricultural class, and to lose their distinctive characteristics.

As the traditions of Unyoro report that the Wachwezi came from the eastern bank of the Victoria Nile, we will cross that river, and we find that between us and Abyssinia there are no grand physical features such as great lakes or continuous ranges to bar the migration to the south of barbarous multitudes; that the soil is poor and the climate dry, and pasture unpromising, and that all the tribes are devoted to the rearing of cattle; that the indigenous races, such as we see in the Congo basin and near the littoral of east Africa, disparted by the waves of migrating peoples on their course south, have been so thoroughly extinguished by the superior Indo-African race that the vast area of the upland from the Victoria Nile to the Gulf of Aden simply repeats its long-established types, which we may call Galla, Abyssinian, Ethiopic, or Indo-African.[34] This too brief outline will serve to prepare the reader for knowing something more of the Wahuma, the true descendants of these Ethiopians, who have for fifty centuries been pouring over the continent of Africa east and west of the Victoria Nyanza in search of pasture, and while doing so have formed superior tribes and nations along their course, from the Gulf of Aden to the Cape of Good Hope—a vast improvement on the old primitive races of Africa.

I propose to illustrate the Wahuma by our experiences with those who recognised Kavalli as chief.

Looking westward from Kavalli’s we had a prospect of over 1,000 square miles. Though fairly populous in parts, the view was so immense that it suggested little of human presence except in the immediate foreground. Compared to the mountainous ridges and great swells of land, what were a few clusters of straw-coloured cotes, with generous spaces between showing the small arable plots of the Bavira soil-tillers? During the earlier days of our residence at Kavalli we enjoyed the free, uninterrupted, limitless view of pasture-land, swelling ridge, bold mountain, isolated hill, subsiding valleys, and extending levels. Undisturbed by anxiety from want of food, and satisfied with our diet of grass-land esculents and nourishing meat, it was exhilarating to the nerves to watch the countless grass blades stoop in broad waves before the gusty winds from the Nyanza, and see them roll and swerve in currents of varying green, after our long forest life.

Kavalli’s zeriba, wherein he herded his cattle and flocks every night, was in the centre of a gentle slope of turfy green. Constant browsing by the swarming herds of himself and Wahuma neighbours kept the grass short, and gave us unobstructed views and walks over delicious pasture. Even the tiny chicklings attendant on the mother hen might be numbered at a bowshot’s distance. Every few yards or so there rose an ant-hill from 3 to 12 feet high. They served happily enough for the herdsmen to keep watch over their herds and flocks of sheep and goats, and those near the kraals were the resort of the elders and gossips to discuss the events of the period. There at such times, in low converse with Kavalli and his aged men, I gained large insight into the local histories of the villages and tribes about him. Indeed, no more suitable spot could be found, for before us were mapped out nearly threescore districts.

Far to the west rose Pisgah, throned high above a hundred leagues of dark forest-land, and every yard of its contour distinct in delineation against the reddening sky. Lifted in lone majesty, a sombre mass, it attracted the attention in every pause of the conversation. From Pisgah, which to Kavalli was the end of the world, all beyond being fable and night, he would direct our gaze to Kimberri’s cones, a day’s march N.N.W. to the lofty peak of Kuka seen just behind, and then to the massy square-browed mount of Duki, and the flats below occupied by the Balungwa, of whose numerous herds he had much to say; and to Kavalli, be it remembered, there was no subject so worthy of talk as cattle. To the south of west a range of grassy mountains rose in Mazamboni’s country, and extending in a seemingly unbroken line to the verge of the gulf occupied by the Albert Lake, and its bordering plains, valleys, and terraces. The westerly portion is governed by Mazamboni, the easterly by Chief Komubi. The plain extending from the mountains as far as Kavalli is called Uzanza, and is occupied by the agricultural Bavira, who came originally from behind Duki, in the neighbourhood of Kuka Peak. Between Kavalli and Kimberri a great cantle of the plain is owned by warlike Musiri and his people.

Having dealt with the main feature of the land, Kavalli proceeds to unbosom himself. He is in danger of his life from Kadongo, who is an ally of Kabba-Rega, and he has an enemy in Katonza. Some years ago Kavalli possessed a village near the Nyanza, where his fishermen lived. Kadongo envied him the fine possession, and with Katonza and some raiders of Unyoro set upon Kavalli, burned his village, slew many of his people, and despoiled him of all his cattle in one night. Kavalli fled to Melindwa, and after awhile he returned to live with the Bavira, and by scraping a bit here and there, and making good bargains, he can show about eighty head of cattle to-day. He has received warning, however, that Kadongo will attack him again.

No sooner has Kavalli ceased his graphic recital wrongs endured, than Katto and Kalengé—Mazamboni’s brother and cousin—begin to detail the wrongs inflicted on them by Musiri. A brother and a sister, several relatives, and many friends have been slaughtered by relentless Musiri. The stories are given circumstantially with expressive action, and heighten the atrocious conduct of Musiri.

Then Gavira begins to relate how the Balegga of Mutundu, and Musiri, have ill-treated him. According to him, what few herds escaped the rapacious Wara-Sura during their periodic raids have been often thinned by the nocturnal cattle-lifters of Mutundu and Musiri, who steal alternately from him. “Ah,” says Gavira, “to-day it is the Wara-Sura, to-morrow it is Musiri, the day after Mutundu; we are continually flying to the hills from somebody.”

Yet, gazing on the wonderfully pleasant scene of green grass-land before us, with not a cloud in the sky, and a drowsy restfulness everywhere, who could have supposed this Arcadia-like land was disturbed by contentions, enmities, and wars?

Most of the Wahuma now west of the Albert came from Unyoro, as they fled from the avaricious tyranny and avarice of its kings.

Old Ruguji, for instance, who is next neighbour to Kavalli, and whose forty head of cattle we rescued for him from Melindwa, was born in Unyoro, and remembers his great-grandfather, who must have been born about 1750 A.D. When he was ten years old (1829) Kuguji remembered Chowambi, father of Kamrasi, the father of Kabba Rega, sending to his great-grandfather for cattle. “At that time the Semliki River flowed into a large lagoon, called Katera, on the south-east side of the Lake. The Waganda were often prevented from crossing over to the Balegga countries because of those lagoons, but since the lagoons have been filled with mud, and the Semliki falls into the Lake, and as Kamrasi wanted cattle continually, and one day he took all, I took my women and children, when I was a young man, and came over here.”

“Have you had peace here, Ruguji?”

“See my scars; I have things to remind me of the Balegga and Melindwa, Musiri and the Wara-Sura. The Bavira also came from Kukaland, and they asked our permission while we were feeding our herds to come and live with us, but they have the big head also, and some day there will be trouble with them.”

The pasture-land lying between Lake Albert and the forest was subjected to much denudation by rain. Though the bosses of hills, ridges, dykes, bear an approximately uniform level, the intermediate ground varies greatly—it is highest of course as it approaches the Albert, and lowest towards the Ituri river, which drains nearly the whole of the area. It would be difficult, however, to find an absolutely level tract of any respectable extent, though a cursory view of it might decide otherwise. It is a complicated system of slope and counter-slope, supplying scores of tributary rivulets, brooks and stream, belonging to some main feeder of the Ituri.

The nature of the soil, being a loose sandy loam—loosened still more by hosts of burrowing beetles, which do the office of moles and earthworms—offers no resistance to the perpetual denuding of the surface by frequent furious and long-lasting rainstorms, despite its rich crops of grass. A visit to one of the streams after a rainstorm reveals how rapid is the process of destruction; and if we follow one of these smaller streams to the confluence with the main tributary, we shall see yet greater proofs of the havoc created in the face of the apparently smooth swells of land than would appear at first possible by a few hours’ heavy rain.

In the district in view from Kavalli I have estimated that the entire number of cattle cannot exceed 4,000 head. They are almost equal in size to English oxen, and are of a humpless breed, very different from the species south and east of Lake Victoria. The horns are of medium length, though there are some few distinguished for unusual length of their horns. The bulls, however, were well developed in the hump. The cattle of Usongora and Unyoro are mostly all of a hornless and humpless breed, and principally of a fawn colour; while those of Ankori have immensely long horns, and their hides are of variegated hue. It is said that the cattle are made hornless by burning them with fire, with a view to enable them to penetrate jungles. The owners mark their cattle on the ears with one or several cuts, by piercing or excision at the ends.

Kavalli informed me that large numbers of cattle are sometimes poisoned by plants, if they happened to be driven somewhere not generally haunted by them. Repeated burnings of the grass, however, render the herbage innocuous. The plains in the neighbourhood of the Lake are very fatal to the herds. In fifteen days a disease develops, with a running at the nostrils; the milk dries up, the coats begin to stare, the animal refuses to eat, and dies.

The old Wahuma have good veterinary knowledge perhaps, but many of their practices would not bear repeating. I wished to have some butter made with my ration of milk, and sent to borrow a churning gourd, and after the operation directed the servants to wash the vessel; but this produced a storm of reproaches. They believed water in the vessel to injure the cattle. Nor will they permit a person who eats cooked food to put his lips to any pot, basin, or gourd that is used in contact with their cows.

The sound of the churning was heard daily in a hut near my tent, and the operation was performed in a somewhat similar style to agitating a punkah, the milk gourd being suspended to the rafter of a house.

The milk yield of the cattle is very small considering the size of the cattle and the abundance of pasturage. The best milker does not furnish more than half a gallon per diem. Kavalli’s boys and young men were employed in milking our cattle. They invariably lashed the hind legs together, and brought the calf to its mother’s head; one hand held the wooden vessel and the other milked, and they appeared to leave but little for the hungry calves. The goats often gave us as much milk as an ordinary cow, but I have never observed that the natives cared for the fair supply they might have obtained from these useful animals.

Though a woman is as much a chattel in these lands as any article their lords may own, and is priced at from one to five head of cattle, she is held in honour and esteem, and she possesses rights which may not be overlooked with impunity. The dower stock may have been surrendered to the father, but if she be ill used she can easily contrive at some time to return to her parents, and before she be restored the husband must repurchase her, and as cattle are valuable, he is likely to bridle his temper. Besides, there is the discomfort of the cold hearth, and the chilly arrangement of the household, which soon serve to subdue the tyrant.

I was requested to adjudicate a case relating to marriage custom, between Kavalli on the one hand, owner of a slave girl, and Katonza, a Mhuma chief. The latter had sought Kavalli’s girl in marriage, and had paid two cows for her out of three that had been fixed as the price. Kavalli therefore detained the bride of Katonza, and this detention was the cause of his grievance. The price was not denied, and Katonza offered a plea that he feared the girl might not be surrendered by Kavalli if he paid the third cow. He was requested to put the cow into court, and in this manner the bride was forthcoming.

Kavalli brought another case to me for consideration. He was already five times married, and he desired a sixth wife. He had purchased her from the tribe of Bugombi, and her parents, having heard something to his prejudice, wished to compel a double payment, and would not deliver her to him. Whereupon I suggested to Kavalli that by giving another cow and a calf the matter might be arranged.

The next case that I had to judge was somewhat difficult. Chief Mpigwa having appeared at the Barza (Durbar), a man stepped up to complain of him, because he withheld two cows that belonged to his tribe. Mpigwa explained that the man had married a girl belonging to his tribe and had paid two cows for her, that she had gone to his house, and in course of time had become a mother, and had borne three children to her husband. The man died, whereupon his tribe accused the woman of having contrived his death by witchcraft, and drove her home to her parents. Mpigwa received her into the tribe with her children, and now the object of complaint was the restoration of the two cows to the husband’s tribe. “Was it fair,” asked Mpigwa, “after a woman had become the mother of three children in the tribe to demand the cattle back again after the husband’s death, when they had sent the woman and her infants away of their own accord?” The decision upheld Mpigwa in his views, as such conduct was not only heartless and mean, but tended to bring the honoured custom of marriage contracts into contempt.

The women have control within the house, and over the products of the dairy and the field. It is the man’s duty to build the house, tend and milk the cattle, repair the fence, and provide the clothing, which is naturally scanty; but it is the woman who cultivates the field, makes the butter, and does the marketing. Butter and milk must be purchased from her, as well as the provisions. It is an universal custom in Africa.

The dress of the men consists generally of a single goat-skin, which depends from the left shoulder. It is varied with antelope-hide with the hair scraped off, excepting a margin of three or four inches wide round the borders. The wives are clothed with cow-hides, which are often beautifully tanned and soft: slave women, in the absence of a goat-skin, wear a strip of leather round the waist, from which a narrow piece of bark cloth depends in front and back, or a very limited apron. Girls up to a marriageable age travel about publicly in complete nudity, while boys over ten years old are rarely seen without a kid-skin, aping the adult: on occasions of rejoicing each woman bears in her girdle at the back a bunch of green leaves, corn or sugar-cane leaves, or a piece of banana frond.

The favourite wives of chiefs, or “medicine women,” “witches,” are also entitled like the great chiefs to wear a leopard-skin, or in lieu of that, cat or monkey-skins. It seems to be a pretty general idea that leopard or lion skins prove rank and dignity. If a stranger expresses a doubt that a chief is only a person of low rank, he points to his leopard-skin and asks, “How can I possess this, then?”

A PAGE FROM MR. STANLEY’S NOTE-BOOK.

MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS OF THE BALEGGA.

In looking over Wilkinson’s ‘Ancient Egyptians’ the other day I was much struck with the conservative character of the African, for among the engravings I recognize in plate 459 the form of dress most common among the Wahuma, Watusi, Wanyambu, Wahha, Warundi, and Wanyavingi, and which were in vogue thirty-five centuries ago among the black peoples who paid tribute to the Pharaohs. The musical instruments also, such as are figured in plates 135, 136—a specimen of which is in the British Museum—we discovered among the Balegga and Wahuma, and in 1876 among the Basoga. The hafts of knives, the grooves in the blades and their form, the triangular decorations in plaster in their houses, or on their shields, bark clothes, boxes, cooking utensils, and in their weapons, spears, bows, and clubs; in their mundus, which are similar in form to the old pole-axe of the Egyptians, in the curved head-rests, their ivory and wooden spoons; in their eared sandals, which no Mhuma would travel without; in their partiality to certain colours, such as red, black, and yellow; in their baskets for carrying their infants; in their reed flutes; in the long walking-staffs; in the mode of expressing their grief, by wailing, beating their breasts, and their gestures expressive of being inconsolable; in their sad, melancholy songs; and in a hundred other customs and habits, I see that old Egyptian and Ethiopian characteristics are faithfully preserved among the tribes of the grass-land.

The boys have games similar to those of “marbles” and ball and backgammon with us. As the ancients bore their watering-pots for irrigating their fields, so the Wahuma convey the milk to their chiefs; and the oil of their castor berries, and butter, serve to perpetuate the custom of old antiquity in their ablutions; and in the respect paid to the elders and their chiefs by the modern youth of Inner Africa may be observed that reverence which was so often inculcated in the olden time. These people, having no literature, and undisturbed by advent of superior influences among them, have only learned what has been communicated to them by their parents, who had received from their progenitors such few functions and customs as were necessary for existence and preservation of their particular tribal distinctions. Thus the unlettered tribes of these long unknown regions are discovered to be practising such customs, habits and precepts, as must have distinguished the ancestors of the founders of the Pyramids in the dark prehistoric ages of Egypt.

No traces of any religion can be found among the Wahuma. They believe most thoroughly in the existence of an evil influence in the form of a man, who exists in uninhabited places as a wooded, darksome gorge, or large extent of reedy brake, but that he can be propitiated by gifts; therefore the lucky hunter leaves a portion of the meat, which he tosses, however, as he would to a dog, or he places an egg, or a small banana, or a kid-skin, at the door of the miniature dwelling which is always found at the entrance to the zeriba.

Every person wears a charm around the neck, or arm, or waist. They believe in “evil eyes” and omens, but are not so superstitious as the Waganda, probably because they are so scattered. Witchcraft is dreaded, and the punishment of a suspected person follows swiftly.

WEAPONS OF THE BALEGGA AND WAHUMA TRIBES.

Poor Gaddo, a good-looking, faithful young fellow who accompanied Mr. Jephson as lake pilot to Mswa Station soon after his return to Kavalli’s village, was suspected of conspiring against his chief. Gaddo came to me and reported that he was in danger, and he was advised to remain in my camp until we should leave. The elders proceeded with a fowl to a distance of about a hundred yards beyond the camp, and opened the breast. They were seen whispering together over what they had discovered, and it was presently known that the jury had found Gaddo guilty of evil practices against Kavalli, and this was doom. As Gaddo was as guiltless as the babe unborn, a messenger was sent to the chief to say that if he were injured Kavalli would be held responsible. Yet Gaddo felt so uncomfortable in the vicinity of the village, as public opinion had already condemned him, that he sought to escape to Katonza’s by the lake, but on the brow of the plateau fate found him. It was reported circumstantially that while standing on a rock he had fallen over and broken his neck. It was very sad to hear the young wife and children and sisters wailing for the dead, and Kavalli was markedly good and amiable in those days.

The diet of the Wahuma is principally milk. The sale of their butter and hides now and then enables them to purchase sweet potatoes, millet, and bananas, but it is with a peculiar pride they say they are not “hoemen.” The sorghum of the tribes around them is of the red variety. The Indian corn, or maize, is of an inferior quality. It is planted in the latter part of February at the same period as the beans. In two months the latter are fit to be eaten. A month later the corn comes into ear, and in the fourth month it is mature. In September the millet is sown and is ripe for cutting in February. Every village owns extensive tracts planted with sweet potatoes, and along the edges of their plantain groves they grow colocassia, or helmia; but the latter are not favourites with strangers, as ignorance in the art of cooking them leaves them nauseous.

The “malwa,” or beer, is from fermented millet and ripe bananas. It is in great demand, and a chief’s greatest business in life appears to be paying visits to his friends round about, for the purpose of exhausting their malwa pots. Fortunately, it is not very potent, and is scarcely strong enough to do more than inspire a happy convivial feeling.

The climate of the region is agreeable. Five hours’ work per day can be performed, even out-door, without discomfort from excessive heat, and three days out of seven during the whole of daylight, because of the frequent clouded state of the sky. When, however, the sky is exposed, the sun shines with a burning fervour that makes men seek the shelter of their cool huts. The higher portions of the grass-land—as at Kavalli’s, in the Balegga Hills, and on the summit of the Ankori pastoral ranges—range from 4,500 to 6,500 feet above the sea, and large extents of Toro and Southern Unyoro as high as 10,000, and promise to be agreeable lands for European settlers when means are provided to convey them there. When that time arrives they will find amiable, quiet, and friendly neighbours in that fine-featured race, of which the best type are the Wahuma, with whom we have never exchanged angry words, and who bring up vividly to the mind the traits of those blameless people with whom the gods deigned to banquet once a year upon the heights of Ethiopia.