74 ON THE INHABITANTS OF THE 



years, according to the degree of propinquity and es- 

 timation in which each was held : it however ceases 

 at any time that the survivors remove from the vil- 

 lage in which their kinsmen died. 



When a chief of opulence and high rank is dan- 

 gerously ill, he orders his relations, male or female, 

 and vassals, to be assembled ; as soon as they attend 

 him, he informs them of his situation ; and, as they 

 will observe he has not long to live, he desires them 

 not to grieve, but to be comforted, and points out 

 the son whom he wills to be his successor. Here 

 primogeniture has no preference: if he be a son, he 

 must succeed*, a daughter cannot ; though an idiot, 

 it is to be understood his right ; and some near kins- 

 man is named by the dying man to be his son's 

 guardian : to him he bequeaths his 1 ' territories and 

 fortune (though certain sums or parts are to be dis- 

 tributed) and desires them to look to him for pro- 

 tection. On his death a drum is beat, to announce 

 it to such as are at a distance, that they may attend 

 to see the body ; which is not removed before the 

 vassals collect together, to be witnesses of the fact ; 

 it is then earned without the village, close to which 

 it is interred on the bed-stead, in the same manner as 

 related of a young man's or virgin's funeral. A piece 

 of silk is spread over the grave, and stones placed so 

 as to prevent the wind blowing it off; a hut is 

 erected to shelter it, and, round the whole, a fence 



* In some of the iuppaht, a son may be set aside, and the suc- 

 cession may be bequeathed to a brother, as is now the caie in Mun- 

 nccarry ; the preient chief, brother to the late Maungy^ who left a 

 son a minor, succeeded by desire of the deceased, and received his 

 brother's widows as wives. 



of 



