Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/119

 But according to the English missionaries it really amounts to 5,000,000, that is to say, nearly 200 persons per mile, a density almost one-fourth more than that of France. However, a still more remarkable statement of Messrs. Felkin and Wilson throws some doubt upon the value of these provisional estimates. According to them, the women are three and a-half times more numerous than the men, a social phenomenon elsewhere without parallel. Hitherto all the regular statistics have shown that the sexes are nearly equal, either with a slight overplus for the women, as in all the countries of Europe and the New World, or with a small excess for the men, as in Japan. English travellers seem to think that this extraordinary disproportion may be due at once to natural and political causes. The births of girls far exceeds those of boys, as is evident from the groups of children playing before the huts, the dangers of the battlefield and the massacres of the captives accounting for the rest. On their successful expeditions the Wa-Ganda warriors, like their neighbours, kill the men and carry off the women, who are afterwards divided amongst the conquerors.

In U-Granda, as in most of the other states of the plateau, the power belongs to the Wa-Huma nation, although the majority of the inhabitants are the Wa-Ganda, who have given their name to the state. They are true Negroes, with almost black complexion and short woolly hair, above the average height, and endowed with uncommon muscular strength. The women are distinguished by their small hands and feet. The Wa-Nyambo, who come from Karagwe and the adjacent provinces, and who are for the most part pastors, are more slender in appearance than the natives. But the Wa-Soga, immigrants from the countries situated to the cast of the Somerset Nile, equal the Wa-Ganda in stature and in strength, while they are even of a darker complexion. Amongst these various peoples albinos are very numerous; nevertheless they are exhibited as curiosities in the huts of the chiefs. The practices of tattooing the face, distending the lobe of the car, or filing the teeth to a point, common amongst other African tribes, are here unknown, all voluntary mutilation being forbidden under pain of death. Nor do the Wa-Ganda grease the body with fat, and they are in other respects of cleanly habits and given to frequent ablutions. The most dreaded disease is small-pox, probably imported from the eastern coast. It spares few persons when it presents itself in an epidemic form. A few scattered cases of leprosy are to be found here and there, persons frequently being seen with their black skins covered with white blotches, like those of the Mexican Pintados.

The chief food of the Wa-Ganda is the banana, of which they possess several varieties, amongst others the Ethiopian musae ensete. It is prepared by them in various ways, being even made into flour and a fermented liquor which they brew from it. Sweet potatoes, haricots, various kinds of gourds and tomatoes, maize, millet, papaw fruit, rice, and vegetables introduced by the Arabs, are amongst their alimentary plants. The coffee-shrub is also cultivated, but yields a very small