DINKA LAWS 161 warlike in character, it was quite unsensational. Four men and four women advanced toward me, retired backwards and came forward once more, keeping time with short steps and a hopping shuffle, and a bend of both body and knees. Eventually the men approached closely, then the women supplanted them, two kneeling before me, two standing, all chanting and casting weird glances until a shilling was placed on their foreheads. In the meantime the respectable old gentlemen with the tarbushes and serious faces became comic in their intenseness and vigour.

I learn that the laws of the Dinka are of a most intricate nature, drawn up in a well-defined code, and dependent on sequence of reasoning. Many provisions have resemblance to laws detailed in the earliest books of the Bible, and comparison with the Babylonian records of Hammurabi—the Amraphel of Genesis—might bear interesting fruit.

When it is realized that the method of government, to every possible extent consistent with British ideas of humanity, is to apply native law, the tax on the powers of a conscientious Inspector can well be imagined, and the difficulty in this unhealthy country is to avoid frequent changes, with consequent loss of efficiency.

One speculates, when primitive man is before one, as to whether the early man of Genesis exhibited such characteristics as these—whether Adam, Cain, and Abel, rolled themselves in objectionable matters and wood-ash to keep off mos-11