CHILDREN OF NATURE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XLV, Issue 3993, 28 July 1915, Page 3

CHILDREN OF NATURE.

The Kavirondo natives of the Victoria Nyanza region are depicted as a happy, cheerful race, living in a state of nature, and, at the same time, with a high standard of morality—in marked cont rast to neigh boring t ribes of negroes. A recent, chronicler (Sir Oswald) states that under British rule in the districts free from sleeping sickness, they are steadily increasing in numbers, while their chi enemies, the Nandi, with their lax morals, are dying out. [freedom is in every respect the keynote of Kavirondo life, and is expressed in love of songs and laughter. With the exception that the tasks of cooking and water-carry-ing are confined to women, the sexes stand very much on an equality in regard to their daily work, and even from a physical standpoint there is not the marked 1 , difference' between them observable in most races of man'kmd.

A principal amusement of the Kavirondo is a mimetic and be.echiantie dance, in which both meii and women join. 'The dancing goes on until sunsot, when large bonfires are lit and night made hideous with singing and rowdy festivities assisted by copious libations of millet beer. “On the morning after one of these tribal dances, I often.” writes our author, “used to meet the revellers, worn out with their exertions, returning to their homes, wearily trailing their spears behind them, and presenting a very limp and nll-nightish appearance, so different from their brisk and jaunty demeanour of the, previous day.” ..