EAST CENTRAL AFRICAN CUSTOMS. 247 



spirits are effectually deceived ; when the mourners retire, there 

 is nothing in the mock grave but a bundle of rushes, while the 

 true grave they do not know and can not find. Traces of this 

 still linger in the South. 



As the African must account for the origin of death, so, too, 

 he has a theory regarding the first appearance of man on the earth. 

 Both he and all other animals came out of a hole in the ground, 

 after which Mulunga — the great ancestor — closed up the opening. 

 The place is now desert, no man dwells there, and the spot is 

 Known to none. The gods refuse to reveal it. "Whether this is 

 that it may not be opened, and other creatures be allowed to es- 

 cape from it, their philosophy does not very clearly explain, but 

 what is very certain is, that monkeys were men at the time of 

 their exit from the earth,* but having quarreled with their friends, 

 went to " dwell in the bush." To vex and harass those whom they 

 left, they began to pick the seed from the ground after it was 

 sown, and this habit having grown to be hereditary, monkeys can 

 not grow corn, as they " could not leave their own seed in the 

 ground," which is perhaps as good a definition of the difference 

 between men and monkeys as any given by scientists. 



Reference to monkeys reminds one of that wonderful proces- 

 sion seen by the pasha, where each carried a torch to light him in 

 his depredations among the corn-fields — a story which one man 

 explains by referring it to Emin's defective eyesight, another to a 

 possibility of monkeys being able to produce fire by friction. 

 Without giving any opinion regarding the accuracy of the ob- 

 server, a statement made to me by a South African native, a 

 Pondonusi, may throw as much light upon it as all our science. 

 At the time I paid little attention to it, and indeed it passed quite 

 from my mind till I came across the pasha's story in Mr. Stanley's 

 book. It was, so far as I can recollect, in the following words — 

 the connection in which it was told is of no importance : " The 

 master is surprised. There are monkeys in the mountains " (the 

 gorges of the Drakensberg) " that go to the fires men leave in the 

 bush, and carry away burning sticks ; they even go up the trees 

 with them, and then throw them down. I have not seen it myself, 

 but I have heard say that when women leave a fire near the edge 

 of the bush, they come out to the grass openly with burning 

 pieces of wood, and play with them — some say they carry them 

 back to the fire to make them burn better." If this is a true and 

 sober version of what is not uncommon, a little less science and a 

 little more ordinary intercourse might have saved the eminent if 

 erratic German a good deal of idle speculation. One can quite 

 fancy monkeys playing with fire-brands found near the edge of 



* This tradition Mr. Macdonald found common in the Shirwa and Xyassa regions. 



