* Anthropology : Social 



may he sites set apart not far from towns or villages as regular 

 cemeteries. Not Infrequently islands in rivers or just off the 

 sea coast are used for cemeteries, very often being dedicated 

 to ruling families of chiefs, or to medicine-men or castes 

 or orders of any native hierarchy. There is a celebrated 

 cemetery island in the tidal channel of the Cestos River, 

 and another Russwurm Island just off the promontory of 

 Cape Palmas. Even if the use of these islands or islets is now 

 forgotten and they are overgrown with trees and bush, it will be 

 found generally on examination that nearly all the islands in the 

 rivers or off the coast are still, or have been at one time or 

 another, burial-grounds. P'or this and other reasons they are 

 constantly regarded as " tabu " (to use a South Sea Island ex- 

 pression) or " fetish." This partly arises from the native's in- 

 stinctive horror of dead bodies, whether it be the scarcely defined 

 spiritual existence after the dissolution of the body an existence 

 which may result in evil-disposed as well as friendly ghosts or 

 the lurking belief in ghouls that frequent the cities of the dead, 

 or of wizards who may be there for similar and equally nefarious 

 circumstances connected with the concoction of charms. In 

 several of my previous works on other parts of Africa I have 

 described the most loathsome form of cannibalism which exists 

 more or less in the eastern half of Africa from the equator 

 down to Basutoland. This is the disinterring and devouring, 

 cooked or uncooked, of dead bodies by men and women of 

 horrible morbid tastes, who besides the pleasure which they take 

 in consuming putrefying flesh, believe at the same time that 

 by this disgusting act they are acquiring supernatural powers. 

 Traces of this horrible practice are met with here and there in 

 the traditions of the Liberian natives. Besides this, there is 

 something very ghastly in these West African forest regions 

 connected with human burying-grounds. The graves are very 



