The principal festivities, if they can be so called, are funerals: the object is to ‘break the fear’ (Ussa kiwewe) of death, an event which, savage-like, they regard with a nameless dread, an inexpressible horror. For a whole week the relations of the deceased must abstain from business, however urgent, and ruin themselves by killing cattle and broaching palm-wine for the whole community. At these times there is a laxity of morals, which recalls to mind the orgies of the classical Adonia, and refusal to lavish wealth upon the obsequies of relations is visited with tauntings and heavy fines. A characteristic of Wanyika customs is the division of both sexes into distinct bodies, with initiatory rites resembling masonic degrees. The orders are three, not four as in India, Persia, and ancient Greece; and traces of such organization, founded as it is upon the ages of man, may be found in many communities of negroes and negroids. The Kru Republic, for instance, a pure democracy, flourishing close to the despotisms of Ashanti and Dahome, makes a triple division of its citizens: the Kedibo, or juveniles; the Sedebo, or soldiers (adults); and the Gnekbadi, elders and censors. The southern Gallas appear to be divided into ‘Toibs,’ or officers; the ‘Ghaba,’ adult warriors, who wear four Gútu or pigtails, projecting at right angles from the poll; and the ‘Ari,’ cadets or aspirants, who have a right to only two. The Wakwafi have the El Moran, warriors, young men who live with their fathers; the Ekieko, married men; and the Elkijaro or Elkimirisho, elders. The Wanyika split into the Nyere, or young; the Khambi, or middle-aged; and the Mfaya, or old. Each degree has its different initiation and ceremonies, with an ‘elaborate system of social and legal observances,’ the junior order always buying promotion from the senior. Once about every twenty years comes the great festival ‘Unyaro,’ at which the middle-aged degree is conferred. This (1857) is Unyaro-year; but the Wamasai hindered the rite. Candidates retire to the woods for a fortnight, and clay themselves for the first half with white, and during the second with red earth; a slave is sacrificed, and the slaughter is accompanied by sundry mysteries, of which my informants could learn nothing. When all the Khambi have been raised to the highest rank, the Mfaya, these, formerly the elders, return, socially, to a second childhood; they are once more Nyere, or (old) boys, and there is no future promotion for them. After the clay-coatings and the bloody sacrifice, the chief distinctions of the orders are their religious utensils. Tor instance, the Muansa (plural Miansa) drum, a goat-skin stretched upon a hollowed tree-trunk, six feet long, whose booming, drawn-out sounds, heard at night amongst the wild forested hills, resembles the most melancholy moaning, is peculiar to the third degree or elders of both sexes. It is brought during the dark hours to the Kaya, and the junior orders may not look upon it.