WHERE MEN GO NAKED naked as I had supposed, for each has an apron of deerskin as big as a lady's pocket handkerchief fastened to his waistband behind. The aprons, tanned with the fur on, are tied to the belts with deerskin straps. As far as decency goes, they are of no value at all, and they seem to be used more for ornament than anything else.

Let us train our cameras now on the women. They are by no means so fine looking as the men, being shorter and not so well formed. The younger girls are clad in bead waist belts, while the older ones have each a tassel of fibre tied to a girdle about the waist. This tassel is fastened just at the small of the back and hangs down behind. At a short distance it looks like a cow's tail. I am told that it is an indispensable article of dress for every married woman, and that it is improper for a stranger to touch it. Sir Harry Johnston, who once governed these people, says that even a husband dares not touch this caudal append¬ age worn by his wife, and if, by mistake, it is touched, a goat must be sacrificed or the woman will die from the insult.

Some of the native women here in Kisumu wear little aprons of fibre, about six inches long, extending down at the front. I can see dozens of them so clad all about me, and for a penny or so can get any of them to pose for my camera. The young girls have no clothes at all. This is the custom throughout the country. Indeed, farther back in the interior the fringe aprons are removed, and both sexes are clad chiefly in wire jewellery of various kinds.

The strangest thing about the nudity of these savages is that they are absolutely unconscious of any strangeness in it. Such of them as have not met Europeans do not know they are naked; and a married woman with her tail 297