238 A TANALA FUNERAL. 



king is then made; it is covered with cloth and hung up in 

 the east corner of the house. The heads of his wife and 

 children are shaved. After six weeks, this image is thrown 

 into the Eiver Matitanana, and the same customs are followed 

 as described above on the burial of a subject. Every ox in 

 the kingdom that bellows at that time is killed for the 

 benefit of those who are burying the image. The corpse is 

 buried in a wooden house in the forest; the coffin is made 

 of nato wood. The lid is roof-shaped, and two horns are 

 placed straddle- wise on each side. When this decays, a new 

 one is made, and new cloth is substituted ; and all the kings 

 of one family are buried in one house, but each one has his 

 own coffin. 



Some of the forest tribes, however, in common with the 

 people near to them on the south-east coast, do not bury 

 their dead, but throw them into a large hole or pit in or on 

 the border of the forest. This place is called kibdry, and 

 each village has one for its inhabitants ; the corpses are not 

 covered with earth, but are wrapped in a coarse matting 

 made of rush. Hardly any graves or memorials to the dead 

 are seen in travelling through the forest, or in the Taimoro 

 or Taisaka country ; but at a village called Iaborano, we saw 

 something of the kind in four poles placed in a line, the 

 outer ones higher than the rest, and the inner ones pointed in 

 a peculiar fashion. These appear to serve the same purpose 

 as the upright stones in Imenna and Be^siMo. 



In passing through the great forest farther to the north,- 

 we saw a Tanala funeral, and a curious, although saddening, 

 sight it was. Some time before we met it we heard a good 

 deal of noise and shouting ahead of us, and supposed that 

 the forest people were dragging an unusually heavy piece of 

 timber. On getting nearer, however, we found fifty or sixty 

 people, men and women, and a number of men carrying 

 something, which, on coming closer to them, we found was a 

 child's coffin, made of a piece of the trunk of a tree hollowed 

 out, and with a rough cover of wood fastened on with bands 

 of a strong liana. This was being carried with a barbarous 

 kind of chant, but without the slightest sign of mourning on 

 the part of any one. Amongst these Tanala people funerals 



