Berry — The Sierra Leone Cannibals. 41 



base of the African group-marriage, which aims at the regular protection 

 and provision for the normal sexual and maternal instincts of all women, so 

 that there are no spinsters past girlhood. 



From babyhood both sexes go naked until they reach the age of puberty. 

 While in the Bundu bush the girls wear round their loins several rows of 

 black beads, to which is attached a tail of cotton ; and besides the usual 

 charms, chiefs' daughters are distinguished by wearing a leopard's tooth 

 round their necks. Before leaving the Bundu bush each girl undergoes a rite 

 similar to circumcision by the excision of the clitoris and labia minor, with 

 the object of assisting continence during the long period from the beginning 

 of pregnancy to the termination of lactation ; at the same time they are marked 

 with cicatrices on the front and back of their bodies (vide Plate II.). When 

 they complete the course, they are bedaubed from head to foot with white 

 mud (on the Congo the girls are painted red),' dressed in a barbarous dress of 

 network and brass, loaded with silver ornaments ; and, headed by the Bundu 

 devil, they go in procession through the town (vide Plate I.). As in the Poro, 

 the processional devil is not the head of the society, the society being ruled 

 over by a head woman or priestess, who has the right of entry to the Poro. 



The daubing of the Bundu girls with white clay would seem to indicate 

 that in the past, if not at the present time, the ceremony of initiation as 

 carried out in the Bundu bush must have included a mimic representation of 

 the death and revival of the novice. Amongst many primitive people 

 whitening the body is a sign of mourning : and the negro believes that after 

 death his body becomes white, and some tribes paint their dead white or red 

 so as to resemble spirits, which they believe are of a pale white or reddish 

 hue. So probably the whitening of the Buudu girls is symbolical of the 

 death of the child-life which they have left behind buried in the bush ; and as 

 the white clay falls off so fall away childish things as the flesh from the 

 bones in the grave. 



The Poro biish is cut out on a plan which much resembles a genealogical 

 tree. From the entrance a straight broad path leads into the bush from which 

 spring by-paths like the branches of a tree, each of which ends in a circular 

 cleared space. Going straight ahead from the entrance, one enters the chief's 

 Poro ; on the left of that lies the section of the Sami women, while further to 

 the left lie the sections for the Toma bush and the ordinary and Mahommedan 

 Poro. To the right of the chief's Poro lie the sections belonging to the 

 sectional devils and some unknown sections. 



The Bundu bush is similarly shaped, except that around the outline of the 



' Vide Bennett, op. cit., p. 69. 



[6*] 



