UGANDA JOURNAL.


 V. The problems of administration.

 The River Territories had reached that stage of administration where taxation
had recently been introduced. It took the form of a 'hut tax', and was usually
paid in kind, i.e. in manioc, in maize, in goats, and sometimes in brass rods (mata-
kos) and salt, the principal local forms of currency. Sanders' principal duty as
Commissioner was to collect this tax, which, as elsewhere in the world, was not
paid with any enthusiasm on the part of the tax-payers, in spite of the Com-
missioner's occasional efforts to explain to them that they ultimately derived
benefit by their contribution.
 We are also to imagine that the Territories had come under the British
Crown, as a result of a war of conquest, not very long before Sanders' time, and
that previous to that time the words "homo homini lupus" would have been
an adequate description of the state of society; that the "life of man" was as "poor,
nasty, brutish and short", as in the imaginary "natural state" envisaged by
Thomas Hobbes in the Leviathan, and that, furthermore, large sections of the
population saw no reason why the good old days should not continue.
 From time immemorial the various tribes, especially when their hearts were
puffed up by reason of good crops, had raided each others' settlements, and carried
off each others' women and goats.
 From time immemorial, when things went wrong, when M'shimba-M'shamba
had been more than usually destructive, when the crops had failed, and the
goats had died of mysterious diseases, the correct thing to do had been to con-
sult the local witch-doctors, who usually advised the sacrifice to the offended
deity of one or more young maidens.
 From time immemorial it had been considered ridiculous to support useless
mouths, at the expense of the able-bodied. It was therefore the custom to take
the old and the mad, put out their eyes, lead them into the forest, and leave
them there for beasts of prey to do the rest; and not infrequently this form of
euthanasia was applied to those who were not really due for it, but whose
continued existence happened for other sufficient reasons to be undesirable-
to wives who had seen their best days, or to rich relatives reputed to have treasures
buried beneath their huts and who yet seemed indisposed to lend a ready ear
to the importunities of their less fortunate kinsfolk. This practice Sanders found
it particularly difficult to eradicate.
 There still survived in Sanders' time Arab and other slave-dealers who enter-
ed the Territories by some back-door, and chiefs who were quite ready, as in
the good old days cala cala, to dispose to them of superfluous subjects for a
reasonable consideration.
 Although we read occasionally of women acting as chiefs, by hereditary
right, and women certainly exercised a considerable indirect influence on local
politics, the condition of the female sex was in general depressed. From the begin-
ning of time husbands had been in the habit of beating their wives unmercifully