SOCIETY OF THE UNIVERSITY OP ABERDEEN. 43 



brate the occasion with a feast. In other places, the wife's father 

 supplies this, and there is, of course, an excuse for a good deal of 

 drinking. The fact that a man has bought one daughter in a family 

 entitles him to take her next sister, more or less as his first wife's ser- 

 vant, as it is considered that since he has bought one daughter, he is 

 the man with the first claim to her sister, provided he is eventually 

 able to pay for her, and she is taken on credit. 



In the event of a man dying, his wives are passed on to his eldest 

 son, if he be an adult, and failing him to his brother. The eldest son's 

 own mother has a hut put aside for her in her son's kraal ; it is only his 

 stepmothers whom he takes for wives. This levirate marriage system 

 among natives is an important question, because, with the rite of cir- 

 cumcision, it is one of the principal arguments used to prove the 

 Jewish descent of the Bantu races. But the custom is so widely 

 spread throughout the world that, as with circumcision, one has only 

 to look at the list of tribes which adopt it to see that it is no more 

 proof that the Bantus are descended from the Jews than that they 

 came from Australian stock. 



Their Dead. When any one dies it is not considered by the 

 natives as a matter to be talked about, and the burial is carried out 

 quietly by one or two of the relatives, and the grave concealed as far 

 as possible. The grave is a circular hole about four feet deep. The 

 corpse is tied in the position of the anthropoid ape, with the elbows 

 on the knees and the neck bent, and is placed in such a position that 

 it looks towards its former kraal. If a man dies of a disease from 

 which he has been continually gasping for breath i.e., consumption 

 the man performing the burial rite has to open the thorax in the 

 middle line and remove both the lungs and heart. The thorax is kept 

 open by a couple of sticks. On top of these sticks is placed a piece of 

 cloth which supports the viscera so that they do not slip back into the 

 thorax when they are laid on it. This performance is carried out to 

 prevent the person who is burying the deceased from contracting the 

 disease. A rather fuller kind of pont-mortem is carried out by the 

 Wankonde of British Central Africa, to ascertain the cause of death 



