Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/144

 cemetery, whither the bones of the dead, first buried near the dwelling, are brought after they have been completely decomposed. Funeral dances are kept up round the dead for weeks together. The territory of the Latuka is very fertile, and their tobacco, although nearly always adulterated with foreign substances, is in high demand among the neighbouring peoples. In this country the leopard is the only beast that is feared, as it often attacks man. The lion is so little dreaded that Emin-Bey tells us that one of these animals having fallen into a leopard-trap, the people hastened to set it free.

The Latuka district is bounded on the east by the Lofit or Lafit range, rising some 3,300 feet above the plains, and on the south by still higher mountains. The whole country consists of a long fertile valley studded with trees, amongst which is the " higlik," whose saccharine fruit is so rich in potassium that it is used as soap. The villages are tolerably numerous, many even meriting the names of towns. Tarrangoleh, the chief town, situated in the midst of the Latuka country on the high bank of the Khor Kohs, is said to contain no less than three thousand huts, not including the sheds for some ten or twelve thousand head of cattle. It is surrounded by a strong palisade, each house being further protected by a separate enclosure. Three-storied turrets stand in many parts of the city, in which sentinels keep guard during the night, ready to strike the war drum at the least appearance of danger. One main street intersects the town, all the rest being merely winding alleys, into which the cows can only enter one by one — an arrangement which simplifies counting, and prevents the enemy from surprising and carrying off their herds. In the northern region of this country, the two villages of Wakkala, or Okkela, and Loronio, also known as Latomeh, from the name of its chief, have also a large population. According to Emin-Bey, the women, as in U-Ganda, are far more numerous than the men.

The Latuka are the most easterly of all the Galla tribes, unless the Lango of the Upper Nile and the Wa-Huma of the plateaux are also to be regarded as branches of this race. But on the Bahr-el-Jebel itself and to the west of this river none but Negroes are met. The Niambara, or Niam-bari, occupying a hilly district which forms the water-parting between the Nile and its tributary the Yeï, are akin to their easterly neighbours, the Bari, although their speech is distinguished by a greater variety of tones and sibilant consonants than the language of the neighbouring peoples. Like the Bari, the Niambara are tall and strong and go naked, but load themselves with iron bracelets, rings, and other ornaments of the same metal; while the women wear daggers at the girdle. Although earrings are unknown amongst most of the Nilotic peoples, the Niambara pierce the lobes of the ears, passing glass trinkets through them, and, like the Orechones of South America, distending them on each side of the face. The women also pierce the lips at the corners, and insert a fragment of quartz, or if that is not available, a wooden cylinder or a piece of reed. They wear no loin-cloths, but only a scrap of leather, leaves, or occasionally a small bell. About the middle of the century, before the arrival of the ivory merchants, elephants' tusks were of fiuch little value that they were scarcely used except as stakes for the cattle