: NYAMBARA CUSTOMS. 305 There are hardly any cattle, owing to the insane raids of former years which deprived these districts of their entire possessions in cattle.* ‘The people keep fowls, and generally make clay cages for them underneath the granaries; there are also a few dogs. All the inhabitants are Nyambara (Khor Berr is the boundary between this and the Bari country), who speak a language differing only dialectically from Bari; numerous Madi words are, however, mixed up with it, and point to a long-continued contact with that people, whose migration from the west to the east drove the Nyambara, who lived in the south, towards the north.

To some extent at least, the Nyambara physically resemble the Bari, but they have rounder heads and more compact bodies. The colour of their skin is a pure chocolate brown, often almost running into black. The extraction of the incisor teeth and their habits and customs are the same as those of the Bari. JI was rather surprised to find here women belonging to the Moru tribe married to Nyambara men. Although the Bari, more frequently than any of the Negroes of these countries, leaves his home and settles anywhere where cattle and red durrah thrive, it is an almost unheard-of thing to find a Bari married to a woman of a different tribe. This is also the case among most of the northern tribes, for marriage with women of strange tribes is not permitted. It was, therefore, the more surprising to see these fat, short Mort beauties, ornamented with leaves, amongst the Nyambara women, with their long aprons. Nearly all the men here are clothed with a few cotton rags, but their attire is very scanty, and they wear as ornaments, by preference, necklaces of teeth and small tortoiseshells, as also beads and bracelets and anklets made of iron, copper, or brass. Waist-belts, too, as among all Negro tribes, are indispensable. The women’s leather aprons are often prettily decorated with glass or iron beads, and the fringed aprons worn by the young married women often display very delicate chains made of coiled iron wire. A glittering, polished, dagger-like knife is here a part of the women’s toilet. It is * Emin Pasha refers here to the raids made by the Egyptian troops to obtain cattle and other supplies when they first occupied the country, raids which he found it so difficult to suppress—R. W. F.

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