UGANDA AND THE WAGANDA. 183 couple of sticks or spears, and dancing about and charging towards the king or chief, declares his loyalty and fidelity, and boasts of what he will do in return for the favour shown him.

One thing which strikes the traveller on first seeing the Waganda is the utter absence of all tattoo marks, and of any disfigurement of their persons, such as the enormously distended lobes of the ear, so common among the Wagogo and other tribes south of the Nyanza ; all such practices being absolutely forbidden by their laws. Nor do they extract or file any of their teeth, a custom almost universal among negros. Mutilations, except as a punishment, are prohibited, and are punishable by death.

The diseases to which the Waganda are subject make a formidable list, and include most of the principal diseases known to European physicians.

Small-pox is one of the most fatal, coming at intervals in epidemics, and carrying off thousands of victims ; it is of a very virulent type (confluent), consequently so few of those attacked by it ever recover, that it is rare to find a person, in Uganda, marked with it ; which at first might lead a traveller to supppose that it was almost unknown. It is probably brought by traders and others from the East Coast, where it is chronic. Syphilis is extremely common, especially among the men, in all its forms, and is a frequent complication in other diseases.

Dropsy, measles, rheumatism, ague, bronchitis, oph-