e opposition, and, with characteristic vivacity, protracted
during two months the debate on Baccelli's University Reform Bill,
securing, single-handed, its rejection. A bitter critic of King Humbert,
both in the _Perseveranza_ and in the _Nuova Antologia_, he was, in
1893, excluded from court, only securing readmission shortly before his
death on the 22nd of October 1895. In foreign policy a Francophil, he
combated the Triple Alliance, and took considerable part in the
organization of the inter-parliamentary peace conference. (H. W. S.)

BONGO (DOR or DERAN), a tribe of Nilotic negroes, probably related to
the Zandeh tribes of the Welle district, inhabiting the south-west
portion of the Bahr-el-Ghazal province, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. G.A.
Schweinfurth, who lived two years among them, declares that before the
advent of the slave-raiders, c. 1850, they numbered at least 300,000.
Slave-raiders, and later the dervishes, greatly reduced their numbers,
and it was not until the establishment of effective control by the Sudan
government (1904-1906) that recuperation was possible. The Bongo
formerly lived in countless little independent and peaceful communities,
and under the Sudan government they again manage their own affairs.
Their huts are well built, and sometimes 24 ft. high. The Bongo are a
race of medium height, inclined to be thick-set, with a red-brown
complexion--"like the soil upon which they reside"--and black hair.
Schweinfurth declares their heads to be nearly round, no other African
race, to his knowledge, possessing a higher cephalic index. The women
incline to steatopygia in later life, and this deposit of fat, together
with the tail of bast which they wore, gave them, as they walked,
Schweinfurth says, the appearance of "dancing baboons." The Bongo men
formerly wore only a loin-cloth, and many dozen iron rings on the arms
(arranged to form a sort of armour), while the women had simply a
girdle, to which was attached a tuft of grass. Both sexes now largely
use cotton cloths as dresses. The tribal ornaments consist of nails or
plugs which are passed through the lower lip. The women often wear a
disk several inches in diameter in this fashion, together with a ring or
a bit of straw in the upper lip, straws in the _alae_ of the nostrils,
and a ring in the _septum_. The Bongo, unlike other of the upper Nile
Negroes, are not great cattle-breeders, but employ their time in
agriculture. The crops mostly cultiv