124 William F. Daniell, Esq., on the Ethnography of 



contents accomplished without either dread or compunction. That 

 which, under other circumstances, would be estimated as a crime of 

 no trivial magnitude, is now proclaimed to be a meritorious deed, by 

 the delay or non-performance of which the safety and welfare of the 

 whole community are compromised. 



Upon the event of the death of any individual in a distant country, 

 though years should have elapsed since its annunciation had tran- 

 spired, the relatives and connections, when a fit opportunity pre- 

 sents itself, despatch a party in search of the place of interment, 

 and they, gathering together the mouldering remnants of mortality, 

 return to bury them under the same roof as those of his ancestors. 

 This custom, — which appears to resemble a labour of fidelity due to 

 the memory of the deceased that his bones should not lie among 

 those of strangers, but be blended with those of his family and 

 kindred, so that the cherished remembrances and associations en- 

 gendered in the past, should not be dissolved in the world to come, 

 — has possibly originated from some of those primitive sanatory 

 mandates which restricted the burial of the dead within definite 

 bounds, or in pursuance to family compacts that exacted a compli- 

 ance with certain intramural regulations of immemorial usance. 



Inheritances, fyc. — The law of inheritance, a conspicuous feature 

 in the social institutions of many nations of Western Africa, must 

 be distinguished as the grand pervading principle on which are 

 based the disposition of property and power. This law can only 

 be appreciated from the fact, that the consolidation or dispersion of 

 family influence, the position and stability of subordinate branches, 

 with the control of other kindred interests, are chiefly governed by 

 the absolute right of a well-defined grade of relationship, ex- 

 clusively derived through the blood on the female side. Divers 

 reasons have been assigned for their advocacy of this genealogical 

 system ; but those hitherto brought forward have not proved suffi- 

 ciently explanatory. No traces respecting its date of adoption or 

 traditional introduction can be ascertained ; for all that is known in 

 connection with the subject may be comprised in the brief reply, 

 that their ancestors transferred it from father to son, from such an 

 early age that its source has long been lost in the mists of antiquity. 

 Probably, among the more feasible arguments advanced in support 

 of its tolerance, is that which refers to the woman the peculiar 

 privilege of transmitting the family blood in a less uncertain stream 

 from one person to another ; so that, in its descent, it never could 

 be entirely eradicated by an admixture with that from other chan- 

 nels ; for, whatever marriages might be contracted by the mother 

 or her female descendants, even from one generation to another in a 

 continuous series, still there would always remain a sufficiency to 

 ensure the original characteristics of her progenitors from being 

 destroyed. Again, in further confirmation of these views, it has 



