CAIRO TO KISUMU much available capital. If a man has fifteen or twenty wives, he is supposed to be rich beyond, the dreams of avarice. I hear* that many of the chiefs have a dozen or more, and that since the British have begun to exploit the forests, the more industrious of the native men have been rapidly increasing their families. A good girl, large and healthy, will bring as much as fifty sheep. A maiden is supposed to be ready for sale at twelve years, and twenty dollars in cattle or sheep is an average price. For this sum the woman should be large, well formed, and fairly good looking. Homely or lean girls go cheap and often remain single, in which case they have to work for their parents. A man may pay down ten sheep and agree to bring in the balance from month to month as he and his wives earn the money for them. He goes into the woods and cuts down trees, being paid so much per stick. If he works hard, he may make three or four dollars a month, and if, in addition, he has several women to help him, his income may be doubled or trebled.

In such work the men cut the wood and the women carry it on their backs to the market. They are loaded up by their husbands, a piece of goat skin separating the rough sticks from the woman’s bare skin, and the burden being tied on by a rope of vines which rests on the fore¬ head. In addition to this goat skin on her back, the wo¬ man usually has an apron or skirt of skin tied about the waist and reaching to the knees and sometimes below them. A strong, lusty girl can carry as much as two hun¬ dred pounds of wood in this way, and her husband does not scruple to pile on all she can take.

In coming from the plains over the mountains into the Great Rift Valley I rode for miles through the woods and 280