These are called by the natives _Mahoos_; they assume the dress, attitude, and manners of women, and affect all the fantastic oddities and coquetries of the vainest of females.

They mostly associate with the women, who court their acquaintance.

With the manners of the women they adopt their peculiar employments, making cloth, bonnets, and mats; and so completely are they unsexed that had they not been pointed out to me I should not have known them but as women.

I add, with some satisfaction, that the encouragement of this abomination is almost solely confined to the chiefs." Among the Sakalaves of Madagascar there are certain boys called _sekatra_, as described by Lasnet, who are apparently chosen from childhood on account of weak or delicate appearance and brought up as girls.

They live like women and have intercourse with men, with or without sodomy, paying the men who please them.[35] Among the negro population of Zanzibar forms of homosexuality which are believed to be congenital (as well as acquired forms) are said to be fairly common.