BY WILLIAM E. ARMIT, F.L.S., F.R.G.S. 103 
which they had forced the thieves to return, on pain of their 
being attacked by their more powerful neighbours. 1 made 
them a present of the whole lot, adding other things to the gift, 
so that none went away empty-handed. The Morocca people are 
head-hunters of the worst type, and it matters not to them 
whether the victim is a woman or child, they slaughter indis- 
criminately. 
The coast tribes bury their dead in front of their houses, 
in very shallow graves. The widow sleeps on the de- 
composing body of her husband, and anoints herself daily 
with the putrid juices of his body. Her relatives and friends 
join her in this horrible ceremony, which is repeated for several 
days. The mourners shave their heads, and blacken their bodies 
all over with burnt cocoanut-husk ash. The women wear a 
neck-lace and ear-rings of the seeds of Coix lacryma during their 
widowhood, which, in some tribes, lasts for seven years. 
The inland tribes place the body on a tressel over a shallow 
trough, and allow it to remain there for three or four days, until 
it has swollen nearly to bursting. An incision is then made, and 
the juices are expressed and collected in the trough. The 
friends and relatives, being in attendance, are led up singly to 
this, and, dipping their hands into the terrible liquid, they 
anoint their faces, hair, and bodies with it. Then a banquet 
takes place. Where the appetite comes from deponent knoweth 
not. ‘The body is then slowly smoke-dried until it resembles a 
mummy. It is then rolled in aromatic herbs and tappa, enclosed 
in a hammock, and hung up in the common room, where it 
remains until some other member of the family dies. It is then 
carried to the tribal vault, generally a cave, or, failing this, to 
some hut which answers the purpose of a mausoleum, and is 
there laid reverently beside some other skeleton. 
The people are excessively jealous of any stranger intruding 
upon the privacy of their dead. Nothing would cause a dis- 
turbance more suddenly than the discovery of such intrusion; 
