Use of Cowry-shells for Currency, Amulets, etc. 159 
In Togo-land cowries are also paid by the relations of 
a girl seeking admission among the Ewe-priestesses, and 
when the betrothed Ewe-youth brings his wife home 
he pays to her parents 4 marks in cowries.'” At death 
ceremonies, relations, friends and acquaintances, place 
quantities of cowries in the grave with the dead, in order 
that the deceased may purchase food and palm-wine, 
and reward the old ferry-man Akotia who carries him in 
his canoe over the wide river Assisa to the region of the 
dead. According to Monrad,™ the negroes fully believe 
that everything expended in the funeral obsequies, such as 
the goods, coral, cowry-money, etc., placed in the grave, 
the tobacco used and the wine drunk on such occasions, 
will be of use to the defunct when he rises up in the future 
world. 
Among the Bassari-people Klose found the previously- 
mentioned game of chance (cowry-throwing), at which he 
saw soldiers wager cowries to the value of from I to 3 
marks at a cast. Cowry-casting for divination was also 
employed by the priests in the fetish-village Dadease. 
According to R. Fr.’ Miiller, at the circumcision of 
boys the circumciser receives a cowry, conveys it to the 
forehead of the person about to be circumcised, and finally 
buries it with the prepuce in a small pit; as a reward he 
receives 81 cowries. According to the same informer, 
cowries were offered to the small-pox fetish.”” 
That cowry-money has circulated in Togo for ages is 
proved by an old saying, handed down from generation to 
generation among the Ewe-negroes, according to which 
cowries were found in a basket despatched from heaven 
110 Herold, ‘‘Mitteil. aus den deutsch. Schutzgebeiten,” Bd. V. (1892), 
p- 151 (fide Schneider). 
111 Monrad, ‘‘ Gemilde der Kiiste von Guinea,” p. 11 (fide Schneider). 
112 Miiller, ‘‘ Fetischistisches aus Atakpama (Deutsch-Togo),” Glodus, 
1902, No. 18, pp. 280-1 (ide Schneider). 
