ABSTRACT
The Lugbara live along the line of the Nile-Congo divide where this forms the international boundary between Uganda and the Congo. The country consists of open, almost treeless
rolling plains between 4000 and 5000 feet above sea level, with two mountain massifs, Eti and Lira, rising in the centre. There are many permanent streams and rivers and a well-distributed rainfall of some fifty inches a year ; the soil can at present main tain a population of over 200 to the square mile in the heart of the country. The people are sedentary cultivators, with eleusine and sorghums as staples ; they have cattle and other livestock, but there is no transhumance. With little ecological variation, economic specialization or internal trade, and with a high den sity of population and the small-scale nature of their social organization, there is little direct contact between local groups over large distances, although there seems always to have been a good deal of individual movement between local groups. Great distances are visible in clear weather across the open plateau and the visibility o f the two great mountain massifs and the territories of other groups, which may be well beyond the range of direct social relations of any given group, is of significance in their conceptualization of their society. The mountains feature in all Lugbara myths and genealogical traditions and provide important foci of unity. There is considerable cultural and dia lectal variation in Lugbara, but the large areas characterized by peculiarities of culture-dialect, tattoo marks, granary types and so on-have no political significance. In spite of these differences, which are often as great as those between,themselves and neighbouring peoples, Lugbara recognize themselves to be one people, although they rarely know where are the boundaries of their country.
