M. Jacot
Cited To Me A Similar Case Or So, One Of Which I Must Remark Was In
An Ajumba Town.
The widows were inside the dead husband's hut, as
usual; the Fan huts are stoutly built of sheets of
Flattened bark,
firmly secured together with bark rope, and thatched - they never
build them in any other way except when they are in the bush rubber-
collecting or elephant-hunting, when they make them of the branches
of trees. Well, round the bark hut, with the widows inside, there
was erected a hut made of branches, and when this was nearly
completed, the Fans commenced pulling down the inner bark hut, and
finally cleared it right out, thatch and all, and the materials of
which it had been made were burnt. I was struck with the
performance because the Fans, though surrounded by intensely
superstitious tribes, are remarkably free from superstition {338}
themselves, taking little or no interest in speculative matters,
except to get charms to make them invisible to elephants, to keep
their feet in the path, to enable them to see things in the forest,
and practical things of that sort, and these charms they frequently
gave me to assist and guard me in my wanderings.
The M'pongwe and Igalwa have a peculiar funeral custom, but it is
not confined in its operation to widows, all the near relatives
sharing in it. The mourning relations are seated on the floor of
the house, and some friend - Dr. Nassau told me he was called in in
this capacity - comes in and "lifts them up," bringing to them a
small present, a factor of which is always a piece of soap.
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