We have now to notice the apparel and general external aspect of the people, which is as important in its way as the outline of any natural object, such as the growth and foliage of trees. In default of proper clothing, various disfigurements of person play an important part, and the savage is voluntarily even more of a slave to fashion than any of the most refined children of civilization. Here, as in every other quarter of the globe, the male sex desires to be externally distinguished from the female, and they differ widely in their habits in this respect. There is, however, one ugly custom which is common to both sexes throughout the basin of the Gazelle, which consists in snapping off the incisors of the lower jaw, an operation which is performed as soon as the milk teeth have been thoroughly replaced by the permanent. Upon the south borders of the country, near the Niam-niam, this custom ceases to be exactly followed, and there it is the habit, as with the Niam-niam themselves, instead of breaking them off, to file some of the teeth, and indeed sometimes all of them, into sharp points. Occasionally the natives file off the sides of the upper teeth as well as clip off the lower; nor is it an uncommon thing for gaps to be opened at the points of contact of the central upper teeth, whilst every now and then individual cases occur where interstices have been made in the sides of all the four front teeth large enough to admit a good-sized toothpick. Circumcision is unknown throughout the entire river-district. The men do not go about in a condition so naked as either the Dyoor, the Shillooks, or the Dinka, but they wear an apron of some sort of skin, and recently have adopted a strip of stuff, which they fasten to the girdle that is never missing, allowing the ends to hang over before and behind. All the sons of the red soil, as the Bongo, the Mittoo, the Niam-niam, and the Kredy, are called “women” by the Dinka, because amongst them the females only are protected by any covering of this description. The Bongo women on the other hand, and especially those who reside on the highlands, obstinately refuse to wear any covering whatever either of skin or stuff, but merely replenish their wardrobe every morning by a visit to the woods; they are, therefore, in respect of modesty, less particular than the women of the Dinka; a supple bough with plenty of leaves, more often than not a bough of the Combretum, and perhaps a bunch of fine grass, fastened to the girdle, is all they consider necessary. Now and then a tail, like a black horsetail, composed of the bast of the Sanseviera, is appended to the back of the girdle in a way that has already been mentioned. The rest of the body is allowed by both sexes to be entirely unclad, and no addition to the costume is ever seen, except we should reckon the feathered head-gear, which is exhibited on the occasion of a feast or a ball.