302 William F. Daniell, Esq., on the Ethnography/ of 



out the profundity of their origin and the durability of their sway, 

 appreciable indications, so far, of their gradual descent from tribe to 

 tribe, as they are indubitably coeval in date in their divergence from 

 the great radiating sources of human migrations that have, after their 

 primary severance and isolation from the parental stem, peopled the 

 African continent. 



With other proofs that may be adduced in support of these state- 

 ments, may be mentioned the injunction which expressly forbids the 

 union of any collateral issue by the woman's side. For example, 

 the marriage of two sisters' children is never permitted to take place, 

 on account of the intimate relationship reputed to exist between them, 

 although it would readily be granted if one of the pair belonged to 

 the brother's family. It must be borne in mind that this prohibition 

 does not extend to those children proceeding from the brothers or male 

 kindred, who are allowed to intermarry without the slightest preju- 

 dice, not only among themselves but with their cousins on the aunt's 

 side. A man may not take two cousins to wife from the same parent- 

 age for equal valid objections, nor yet two sisters, which is agreeable 

 to the strict enunciations of the Levitical* and Mohammedan laws, 

 although polygamy prevails in the widest sense of freedom. Allusion 

 has been made elsewhere to another mandate fully as imperative, but 

 of more equivocal tendency, which, claiming its propagation from 

 the earliest ages of the world, has been strenuously advocated even 

 to this day by those Semitic races by whom it was principally adopted, 

 viz., the marriage of a deceased person's wife by his brother or next 

 successor. It is a notable fact that a modification of this custom 

 was comprehended in the code of precepts given to the Jewish nation 

 by their legislator, and interpolated by him, with others selected from 

 the jurisprudence of the surrounding kingdoms, where it was proba- 

 bly designed to answer some important result. The passages in 

 Holy Writ relative to these observances may be found in Deutero- 

 nomy, chapter xxv., and are as follow : — " If brethren dwell together, 

 and one of them die, and have no child, the wife of the dead shall 

 not marry without unto a stranger ; her husband's brother shall go 

 into her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of a 

 husband's brother unto her. And it shall be that the first-born 

 which she beareth shall succeed in the name of his brother which is 

 dead ; that his name be not put out of Israel." 



At Akkrah, and I believe in the other tribes along the Gold 

 Coast, the elder rarely, if ever, inherits either the property or wives 

 that pertained to his younger brothers or kinsmen upon their death ; 

 after this event they become engrafted on the estate of those next to 

 them in consanguinity, and are thus successively transferred through 

 the various ramifications of a family, as the seniors in turn respec- 

 tively drop off. Under these circumstances, therefore, the eldest 



* Leviticus, xviii. 18; Koran, chap. iv. 



