Savage Africa, 
21 
Consul Petherick tells us that, among some of the Afri- 
can tribes, after the death of an individual, the intestines, 
heart, and lungs are extracted from the corpse, and feasted 
upon by the women. The body is then dried and smoked 
into a state resembling that of a mummy, and buried about 
a year after death. Among the Abarambo people a dead 
body is put up to auction, and sold to the highest bidder. 
The price paid for the body is estimated in lances. The 
buyer, after getting possession of the body, cuts it up, like 
the carcase of a sheep or bullock, and retails the pieces and 
joints to the people for consumption as food. The family 
of the deceased do not partake of the revolting food, and in 
this custom alone is their respect for the dead manifested. 
In fact, abstinence from the flesh of the dead relative is the 
recognised sign of mourning. 
As another instance of the way in which African chiefs 
use their authority over their people^ to kill and slay to 
their heart's content, another traveller tells us that during 
his stay at King M'tesa's court, that ruler caused twenty of 
his unfortunate subjects to be beheaded each morning, in 
honour of the visitor. That visitor, however, loathed the 
bloodthirsty compliment, and, at his intercession, M*tesa 
desisted from further massacres. The king signalised his 
accession to power, by killing all his male relatives and 
friends ; and, on more than one occasion, rushed in among 
his wives and children with spears, throwing them indis- 
criminately about, killing and wounding as carelessly as 
one would cut down forest leaves. But Suna, the father of 
M'tesa, was a more bloodthirsty monarch still. It is told of 
him, that he one day caused eight hundred of his people to 
be killed, to satisfy his rage ; while at another time, after 
going to war with a tribe of Wasoga, who had rebelled 
against him, he took and killed twenty thousand prisoners, 
