These are not all mere stretches of
swamp forest. If you land on some of these and go in a little way
you will find the forest full of mounds - or rather heaps, because
they have no mould over them - made of branches of trees and leaves;
underneath each of these heaps there are the remains of a body. One
very evil-looking place so used I found when I was on the Karkola
river. Dr. Nassau tells me they are the usual burying grounds (Abe)
of the Ajumbas.
CHAPTER XIV. FETISH - (continued).
In which the Voyager discourses on the legal methods of natives of
this country, the ideas governing forms of burial, of their manner
of mourning for their dead, and the condition of the African soul in
the under-world.
Great as are the incidental miseries and dangers surrounding death
to all the people in the village in which a death occurs,
undoubtedly those who suffer most are the widows of a chief or free
man.
The uniform custom among both Negroes and Bantus is that those who
escape execution on the charge of having witched the husband to
death, shall remain in a state of filth and abasement, not even
removing vermin from themselves, until after the soul-burial is
complete - the soul of the dead man being regarded as hanging about
them and liable to be injured. Therefore, also to the end of
preventing his soul from getting damaged, they are confined to their
huts; this latter restriction is not rigidly enforced, but it is
held theoretically to be the correct thing.
They maintain the attitude of grief and abasement, sitting on the
ground, eating but little food, and that of a coarse kind. In
Calabar their legal rights over property, such as slaves, are
meanwhile considerably in abeyance, and they are put to great
expense during the time the spirit is awaiting burial. They have to
keep watch, two at a time, in the hut, where the body is buried,
keeping lights burning, and they have to pay out of their separate
estate for the entertainment of all the friends of the deceased who
come to pay him compliment; and if he has been an important man, a
big man, the whole district will come, not in a squadron, but just
when it suits them, exactly as if they were calling on a live
friend. Thus it often happens that even a big woman is bankrupt by
the expense. I will not go into the legal bearings of the case
here, for they are intricate, and, to a great extent, only
interesting to a student of Negro law.
The Bantu women occupy a far inferior position in regard to the
rights of property to that held by the Negro women.
The disposal of wives after the death of the husband among the
M'pongwe and Igalwa is a subject full of interest; but it is, like
most of their law, very complicated.
