Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/120

 berry, of which the "Wa-Ganda make no infusions, using them merely for chewing purposes. They rarely eat meat, as all the live stock, consisting of thin and bad milch cows, goats, and fat-tailed sheep, belong to the Huma, who do not sell them. On the shores of the lake, and on the islands, the inhabitants, mostly ichthyophagous, find abundant nutriment in the multitude of fish abounding in the N'yanza. Nor do the "Wa-Ganda despise smaller creatures, readily eating termites and locusts, and even chasing swarms of flies, which they capture by means of nets drawn quickly through the air.

Owing to the cool atmosphere of these central plateaux the Wa-Ganda build their dwellings more carefully than most other tribes of the continent, and these huts are large enough to permit all domestic work being done within. They are nearly always of the beehive type, consisting of a double hemisphere or dome of branches supported by posts, and thickly thatched with straw of the so-called "tiger grass," some eighteen or twenty feet long. Between the two roofs the air circulates freely, keeping the interior of the cabin fresh and sweet. A sloping ledge of beaten earth round the outside carries off the rainwater during the wet season. Many of the houses have a low porch, under which they enter on all-fours. This, combined with the custom of prostrating themselves before superiors, is the cause of the pouch-like wrinkles that most of the natives have on their knees. Inside, the ground is strewn with bundles of grass disposed in geometrical figures, which produce a pleasing effect until the walls become blackened through the want of outlets for the smoke. Recently the Arabs and the Europeans have constructed other and larger houses, with gables and windows; but the king has not permitted them to erect stone buildings, none having a right to inhabit a grander house than the king's palace. The national costume is also changing under the influence of foreigners introducing new fashions.

Amongst the Central African tribes the Wa-Nyoro and Wa-Ganda alone clothe themselves from head to foot, pain of death even being the penalty for men or women leaving their houses too scantily attired. Till recently the national costume was the mhugu, a garment of bark stripped from a species of fig-tree (fictis ludia), and beaten to render it supple. Over the mbugu the chiefs wore a robe, either an ox-hide or made up of twenty or thirty skins of the little ntalaganya antelope, which is no larger than a hare, and whose brown fur is remarkably beautiful. But the Arab dress is gradually prevailing, even the poorer classes buying the haik, the shirt, the girdle, and the caftan, while the chiefs deck themselves with rich turbans or with the Egyptian fez. Stockings and Turkish slippers are also replacing the coarse buffalo-skin sandals. Their arras are also supplied from Zanzibar, and the Wa-Ganda warriors have already substituted modern rifles for the old-fashioned spears and bows. The Egyptian Government has in vain forbidden the exportation of small-arms to the Nyanza region, for these weapons continue to be imported from other sources.

The practice of polygamy is far more general amongst the Wa-Ganda than amongst the Europeans and Asiatic Mohammedans, the chiefs having no limit to the number of their wives, who are also their servants. The late King M'tesa is