FUNERAL CEREMONIES. 
351 
tremely cold, and the old man did not hesitate to 
ask me to pull down the boughs to make a fire, but 
would not do it himself. 
On another occasion when a poor old woman had 
been deserted by the natives of Moorunde, and died 
a few days after being brought up to the station, I 
had great difficulty in getting the other natives to 
bury her, they would on no account touch the body > 
but after digging a hole, they got a long wiry branch 
of a tree, and one man taking hold of each end they 
bent the middle round the old woman's neck, and 
thus dragged her along the ground and threw 
her into the pit like a dog, all the time violently 
and continually spitting out in every direction to 
ward off, as they said, the infection. 
Sometimes it happens that when a death occurs, 
the nearest grown up male relative, whose duty it 
would be to take the principal part in the ceremo- 
nies, or inflict punishment if evil agency is sus- 
pected to have caused the death, may be absent. In 
this case he would have to discharge these duties 
upon the first occasion of his meeting with the 
supposed aggressors. The following is an instance 
which I witnessed. 
A relative of Tenberry, one of the principal 
natives of the Murray, had died when he was ab- 
* “ He tied a thong to her leg, avoiding the touch of that 
form which gave him birth, dragged the corpse to some bushes, 
and left the thong because it had been in contact with the body 
of his mother.” — Moffat’s South Africa, p. 306. 
