810 REPORT — 1891. 



-the victim is tied hand and foot to a forest tree and left for the night. If devoured 

 by wild animals, the gods have accepted the offering ; if not, he is thrown into lake 

 or river or allowed to die of starvation. The slave was not worth the god's accept- 

 ance. 



Like their Celtic sisters of the north of Scotland, African witches can by their 

 arts ' steal the fret ' of cows and goats. To this also the prophetess must see. 



Murder, adultery, arson, and other serious crimes are capital. The murderer is 

 handed over to the murdered man's relatives to be put to death in the manner 

 most agreeable to their feelings, and fancy. Arson is a crime in which the 

 lex talimiis is practised. House for house ; field for field ; the man's wives and 

 family when he has nothing. Adultery and the law of marriage, in a land where 

 chastity is hardly known, is a curious jumble. Divorce is granted for all sorts of 

 small causes. Speaking disrespectfully of one's parents-in-law, neglecting to hoe the 

 fields on the part of the wife, or the "women's garment-mending on the part of the 

 husband, is suflicient cause. At the same time adultery is punished in the most 

 barbarous manner. A suspected wife is made to fish up a stone from a jar of 

 boiling oil- with her bare arm. As the injury is slight or severe she is innocent or 

 guilty. If guilty, her head is placed in a huge kind of nut-cracker and squeezed to 

 make her confess her lover's name. If she refuse, the torture may be continued 

 till the walls of the skull collapse. A man may have determined to get rid of his 

 wife because she neglected an afternoon's hoeing, but should he find her in an 

 intrigue in the interval she is simply hacked to pieces. Some head men put all 

 male ofl"enders to death as they might interfere with their harems. 



AVar in South Africa resolves itself into a cattle hunt ; in Central Africa into a 

 slave hunt, at times, it is to be feared, into a mutton hunt, for prisoners are now and 

 then eaten by their captors. 



Death is usually the work of wizards, and the magicians detect these, who are 

 put to death. The dead are mourned for by beating of drums, wailing and weeping. 

 Relatives shave their heads ; in the case of a head man, the whole tribe do so. A 

 votive pot is placed near the deceased's house where ofierings are left, A slave 

 may be killed to be buried with his master, so that the former ' may not go alone.' 

 Mock funerals are common, at which the mourners attend to deceive demons, so 

 that they may not get hold of the spirit of the departed. In this case the real 

 funeral is conducted very quietly. Ancestor-worship is universal. The ancestors 

 in the spirit-land are at peace. No Milton has set them by the ears. _ Lightning 

 as an impersonal god is worshipped by some. Spirits may re-appear in material 

 form, but never for good, always for evil. 



Man and all animals came out of a hole in the earth which was 'closed by the 

 great ancestor.' Monkeys were then human, but having quarrelled with their 

 friends, went to live in the bush. To spite their relatives they began to pick up 

 seeds sown- This tendency became hereditary, and so it is that monkeys cannot 

 grow corn, as they pick up their own seed. Africans declare that monkeys play 

 with firebrands when men leave fires in the forest, which may explam the 

 wonderful sights witnessed by Emin Pasha. 



The principal industrial arts are, working in metals and the pursuit of agricul- 

 ture. In the former the Africans are making steady and sustained progress. Tradi- 

 tion points to an age of wooden spades and hoes ; now iron is universal. This 

 they smelt from its ore. In woodwork there does not appear to be the same pro- 

 gress made. 



The minor customs and superstitious referred to incidentally by Mr. Macdonald 

 were very numerous, and had reference to charms, sacred animals, how crows are 

 always looking for seeds lost by an ancestor of theirs, and many others which are 

 interesting not only to the ethnologist, but to all who wish to have an acquaints 

 ance with the habits of life among savage men. The chief must show unbounded 

 hospitality, and the taxes must be light. How both these virtues are to be 

 practised jurists do net defii:e, but it has a curious resemblance to what was com- 

 mon among the Celtic clans two or three centuries ago. 



