CAIRO TO KISUMU of palm fibre feels fully dressed. A traveller tells how he tried to introduce clothing to a gang of naked young women whom he met out in the country. He cut up some American sheeting and gave each girl a piece. They looked at the cloths with interest, but evidently did not know what to do with them. Thereupon the white man took a strip and tied it about the waist of one of the party. Upon this the other girls wrapped their pieces about their waists, but a moment later took them off, saying: “These are foreign customs and we do not want them.”

During my stay in the Kavirondo country I have gone out among the villages and have seen the natives in their homes and at work. The land is thickly populated. The people are good natured, enterprising, and quiet. One can go anywhere without danger, and there is no difficulty in getting photographs of whatever one wants.

I am surprised at the great number of married women. One knows their status from those sacred tails. The Kavirondo girls marry very early. They are often be¬ trothed at the age of six years; but in such case the girl stays with her parents for five or six years afterward. The parents sell their girls for a price, a good wife being purchasable for forty hoes, twenty goats, and a cow. In the case of an early betrothal the suitor pays down part of the fixed sum and the rest in installments until all is paid. If the father refuses to give up the girl when the time comes for marriage, the payments having been made, the suitor organizes a band of his friends, captures her, and carries her home. A man usually takes his wife from a different village from that in which he lives. When he comes with his band to the bride’s village, her gentlemen friends often resist the invasion and fight the suitor’s 298