The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-07-28
IN A KAv1RoNDA MARKET.
scant Attire of African Natives-Lion
 Interrupts Bridge Game.

|
 Interrupts Bridge Game.
 We anchored in Kisumu Bay and
 drew up to the dock at Port Florence
 next morning, writes Caroline Kirk
 land, describing in the Chicago Tri-
 bune a visit to the source of the Nile.
 As the train did not leave there till
 half past eleven I had plenty of time
 to visit the Kavironda Market, one of the extraordinary sights of East Afri-
 ca. As I have related in a previous letter, the Kavironhas are the tribe living on the northeast shores of Lake Victoria, tall, fine looking, we'll de- veloped race which Is chiefly distin-
 guished from the other East African
 tribes to be seen along the Uganda
 railway by the fact that the men and
 women wear absolutely no clothes, not even the customary loin cloth, in spite
 of which they are said to be the most
 moral of the peoples of that region.
 They wear innumerable ornaments, however, of beads, heavy copper wire,
 leather and elephant hair, which they twist into shiny bracelets and anklets.
 They also tattoo and scarify them selves, both faces and bodies, to a
 greater degree than their neighbors
 while their kinky woolly locks are done in all sorts of fantastic styles,
 one gay and industrious buck having apparently strung every hair of his head full of glittering black beads, SO that no hair was visible, only this rat flinp cbtrty,er II
 The market was large, open square, with a roofed over space in the middle, and a flanking on four sides of booths, where the traders, Indian, Coanese and African, carried on their business. Under the central shelter little piles of seeds, millet, rice, corn and many with which I was not fa- miliar were ranged, also strange fruits and what looked like mud pies, and I never could find any one who knew what they were. Crowdlhg every available place were ever changing groups of these extraordinary savages
 Seated on the. ground, perhaps around little fire, would be circle of women, smoking queer pipes or cigar cites of native tobacco or chewing nuts, while wandering about were bands of young warriors. armed with strange shields and spears or bows and arrows. Some were smeared with oil and plastered over with red mud. On the diaphragm of one stalwart woman was a curious design, pricked out with | some poison which turned the flesh at each prick into lump. It may be that the engraver of this human docu- | ment had in mind copy of some cryptic inscription he might have seen on a railway platform. The fine car riage of all these African savages was due probably to the custom of carrying loads on their heads.
 There were hundreds of these Kavl- dondas wandering peacefully about bartering for what they wanted. suing the strings of shells which in this part of Africa serve the natives in lieu of money. They regarded us with a shy, aloof interest, but after while were inclined to too close an inspection for comfort and we left the enclosure. carrying with us strange mental pic- lures of human life in it's most primi- tive, elemental forms; dark, sometimes glossy. skins; tall, well formed bodies: fine, white teeth soft, musical voices; beads of many colors, shining copper with ornaments, strange soarifcation and tattooing devices.
 That afternoon in the train, looking down a steep slope, I saw a family of hyenas, high backed, hairy, hldeous. tearing at some carrlon probably left by a wandering lion. The next morn- ing l woke up at dawn, so as not to miss one instant of the wonderful | Barnums show which the Uganda railway gives you.
 It is like a reversal of the usual cir GUS procession. We were in the cages moving through the land, while the animals we used to watch in their l cages were nowoutside living their lives and gazing at us as we passed There was hardly a moment of the day when there was not in sight some strange creature, either herds of ze- bras or gnus or gazelles of many kinds or else some ostriches seesawing away or solitary secretary bird with it's fantastic crest or a baldheaded vulture flying heavily from one low tree to an- other. dsltS,T |
 In the afternoon was playing a game of bridge under conditions suffi- ciently curious to be noted. Our table was box built for monkey, but at that moment held only two giant sleeping tortoises, while the monkey sat on the professors shoulder. Out side the sun was declining in a golden haze when suddenly we saw five or six giraffes sliding off through some scrub thorns. Their gait was as awkward q S it is in the circus line of march. while