Nowhere in Africa did we come across wilder or more absolutely primitive savages, although these Indians were pleasanter and better-featured than any of the African tribes at the same stage of culture.  Both sexes were well-made and rather good-looking, with fairly good teeth, although some of them seemed to have skin diseases.  They were a laughing, easy-tempered crew, and the women were as well-fed as the men, and were obviously well-treated, from the savage standpoint; there was no male brutality like that which forms such a revolting feature in the life of the Australian black fellows and, although to a somewhat less degree, in the life of so many negro and Indian tribes.  They were practically absolutely naked.  In many savage tribes the men go absolutely naked, but the women wear a breech-clout or loincloth.  In certain tribes we saw near Lake Victoria Nyanza, and on the upper White Nile, both men and women were practically naked.  Among these Nhambiquaras the women were more completely naked than the men, although the difference was not essential.  The men wore a string around the waist.  Most of them wore nothing else, but a few had loosely hanging from this string in front a scanty tuft of dried grass, or a small piece of cloth, which, however, was of purely symbolic use so far as either protection or modesty was concerned.  The women did not wear a stitch of any kind anywhere on their bodies.  They did not have on so much as a string, or a bead, or even an ornament in their hair.  They were all, men and women, boys and well-grown young girls, as entirely at ease and unconscious as so many friendly animals.  All of them—­men, women, and children, laughing and talking—­ crowded around us, whether we were on horseback or on foot.  They flocked into the house, and when I sat down to write surrounded me so closely that I had to push them gently away.  The women and girls often stood holding one another’s hands, or with their arms over one another’s shoulders or around one another’s waists, offering an attractive picture.  The men had holes pierced through the septum of the nose and through the upper lip, and wore a straw through each hole.  The women were not marked or mutilated.  It seems like a contradiction in terms, but it is nevertheless a fact that the behavior of these completely naked women and men was entirely modest.  There was never an indecent look or a consciously indecent gesture.  They had no blankets or hammocks, and when night came simply lay down in the sand.  Colonel Rondon stated that they never wore a covering by night or by day, and if it was cool slept one on each side of a small fire.  Their huts were merely slight shelters against the rain.