SOCIETY OF THE UNIVERSITY OP ABERDEEN. 9 



from the cob by means of the finger and thumb. The grain is broken 

 up in the mortar by means of a wooden pestle, then steeped in Avater 

 to soften it, and finally pounded into flour in the mortar or ground 

 fine between two flat stones (Plate I., Fig. 4). The flour is boiled 

 into a stiff pasty porridge which is eaten with the fingers. Always 

 with the porridge there is eaten some relish such as beans, fowl, fish 

 or game. The relish is indispensable to the meal, and a native will 

 not infrequently go hungry rather than eat his porridge without its 

 accompanying relish. Salt when procurable is always added to the 

 relish, and some of the most widespread superstitions are connected 

 with the adding of salt by the wife to the husband's food. The 

 porridge is served in one dish and the relish in another. The men 

 always eat by themselves and the women by themselves. By way of 

 grace before meat a little of the porridge is picked up with the fingers 

 and thrown over the shoulder or at the foot of the nearest tree as a 

 thank-offering to the spirits. 



Hitherto I have spoken of the division of the people into tribes, 

 and have been referring chiefly to the Yao tribe. The distinctive 

 features of a tribe in Central Africa may be classed as three in number : 

 (1) language, (2) locality, and (3) certain customs which are peculiar to 

 one tribe and are unknown among others. But there is a further 

 division of the people which plays a far larger part in their daily life, 

 and dominates their social life to a far greater extent, and this is the 

 division into clans. I use the word " clan " as the nearest approach to 

 the idea which we have in our language. It denotes blood relation- 

 ship through descent, and is distinct from our ideas of the family or 

 tribe. In the members of the family there may be more than one 

 clan, and the members of a clan are to be found scattered through 

 various tribes. 



This system of clanship is dominated among the Yaos by two 

 features, (1) descent through the mother, and (2) marriage outside 

 the clan. Descent through the mother means that the children take 

 the clan of the mother and not of the father, while marriage outside 



the clan means that a man must not take a wife from his own clan 



2 



