The Holbrook news., 1912-08-02
ZHzRuNs EzR0DaHA LzNNgZE

merous and speak a Bantu dialect of which nothing much is known at pres ent, and they have as yet no written language, no European having ever lived among them. found them in 1892 very wild and shy, owing to the un- welcome visits of Belgian soldiers, and with difficulty persuaded one or two to lead me for an hour or so into the great forest. On the same occasion pygmies were not to be seen, having fled south for the same purpose of avoiding the attentions of uncontrolled policel
 "The other cannibal tribe, the Bagi- su, inhabit the slopes of Mount FL gon, where they are crowded together in a comparatively small area of fer tile country, which they have brought to a high degree of cultivation. The clan system is well developed among them and its regulations rigidly ob- served. Each clan for the most part occupies a strip of country running down from the foothills of Elgon, and to that strip it is obliged to keep for all purposes"
 
 The sleeping sickness, many cases of which came under MT. Kitchfng's personal observation is graphically de- scribed:
 From this place Qganga) we went to visit one of the sleeping sickness camps, at a place called Buso, some two miles away. The horrors of the disease had been aggravated by the famine; in spite of all efforts on the part of the doctor in charge, food was almost impossible except in small quantities, and with five hundred pa tients in the camp large supplies were needed to give each even a little.
 Deaths at the time were running up to seventy or even ninety in a month; as we passed from ward to ward we saw the corpse of a man who had just died lying in the courtyard awaiting the doctors orders for bu- rial. In every direction sat groups of hopeless sufferers, in different stages of the disease and various degrees of starvation, mere skeletons many of them, barely able to crawl about
 "As if disease and famine were not enough, a plague of f1eas and jiggers had defied all the efforts to extermin- ate them, and the feet of many pa- tients, especially the children, were in a horrible condition of alteration Some of the less afflicted patients, still in early stages of the disease, were en- gagged in the unpleasant duty of re- moving the jiggers and dressing the feet of those too weak to do it for themselves. Those comparatively strong ones lived in huts by them selves, only the more advanced cases being taken into the wards.
 Fresh cases were constantly being brought in; one man apparently died in the hammock on the way to the camp and his bearers had commenced to bury him on the roadside, but he sat up in the grave and was brought on. When we saw him he was able to walk about, better food having no doubt done much to temporarily re- store him.
 @One of the saddest sights was the house set apart for the reception of patients in whom the disease induced mania; there is great fear with such cases that they may set fire to the camp, either deliberately or by acci. dent, during the night, so they are made to sleep in place entirely with out windows, and which can be secure ly locked up during the hours of dark ness. One such house into which I went at another camp. in Buganda. was occupied by perhaps fifteen such unfortunates; as they were mostly in | the advanced stages of sleeping sick. | ness, they probably suffered little, if | at all, being unconscious practically all the time"