270 *'AHAI OW MAZADA!"

expression of content with my personality, I tried its effect, on my return to Fashoda, on a solitary Nuer who had been brought into hospital, and who, separated from his companions, speaking no Arabic, and desperately lonely, burst into wreaths of smiles when I shouted " Murder !" into his face I A dance of small boys was voluntarily arranged by the Nuers for my entertainment. Led by a mature instructor, who faced them, they had the advantage of a stringed band in true civilized fashion. Certainly, it was confined to one instrument, a gourd banjo, and had but the usual five notes ; still, it was played in tune and in time, with a drum accompaniment struck by the finger on the sounding-board, but with no vestige of an air.

Primitive as ever, the dance was undoubtedly erotic, and, though comparatively mild in character, it appeared a combination of the danse du ventre and the Maori haka.

Many of the men wore the ivory armlets which are such characteristic ornaments of these Nilotic negroids. Worked out of the upper and hollow portions of the elephant's tusk, they are shaped in different outlines, the sections of some showing considerable taste in the design. Some are crosssections of the tusk, others cut longitudinally ; and such is the slightness of bone in these people, that ladies in Europe, on endeavouring to pass them over the elbow, marvel to think it to be possible by a full-grown man. Some of the finer specimens are