OLD CUSTOMS OF LAWLESSNESS. 105 



Shoes were made from tlie thicker hides. The Hereros wore san- 

 dals with long points in front and behind, projecting beyond the foot. 

 The Namaquas wore something more nearly approaching shoes, in 

 which they attached the upper leather to the sole with a narrow strap. 

 The work being done by the eye, without measuring or fitting, it often 

 happened that the shoes of a pair were of different sizes and shapes. 

 I have never seen anything made of bone in South Africa except little 

 mat-needles among the Namaquas, mouth-pieces of pipes, and snuff- 

 boxes. The Namaquas also make pipes from serpentine. Small bones 

 are worn as ornaments and amulets ; and little children sometimes 

 have a few bones hanging from their belts for playthings. — Trans- 

 lated for the Poimlar Science Moyitldy from Das Ausland. 



OLD CUSTOMS OF LAWLESSNESS. 



By Herr M. KULISCHEE. 



GRIMM tells, in his " Legal Antiquities of Germany," of a peculiar 

 custom which existed, in the duchy of Carinthia, during the 

 election of a new duke, till a comparatively recent period. So long 

 as affairs continued unsettled, relates the narrative from which he 

 quotes, the Gradnecks had the right, which had come down to them 

 from of old, to mow as much hay as they could, robbers to plunder, 

 and pirates to ravage the land at will with impunity, unless peace was 

 made with them. Leoben states that this custom arose in the time of 

 Charlemagne, about a. d. 790, under Duke Ingo, but further than that 

 its origin is still in the dark. It is impossible to explain the existence 

 of so barbarous a practice as this, by reference to any motive of ex- 

 pediency, as we are usually able to do with the phenomena of political 

 and social life. An outbreak of outrage could evidently respond to no 

 real social want ; least of all a usage that must have been destructive, 

 for the time being, of all fundamental conditions of social life, and of 

 the material well-being of the population, and that could not have 

 failed to be detrimental to the maintenance of social order when law 

 was supposed to be again in. force. The case is evidently one of a 

 survival from a former period, a relic, perhaps, of some older condition 

 of society. We may probably find a little light concerning its origin 

 in the study of some of the savage tribes of the present time, who are 

 believed by many anthropologists to be living in the same grades of 

 civilization which the ancestors of modern civilized nations have 

 passed through. 



We learn from African ti'avelers of the existence by custom, in 

 some of the West African states, of a general anarchy and tolerated 

 hostility during the interregnum between the death of a king and the 



