On one occasion when out with an old native
looking for horses before it was daylight, I came to a grave of no very
old date, and where the boughs and bushes built over in the form of a hut
were still remaining undisturbed; the weather was extremely 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.
[Note 83: "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.]
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
ceremonies, or inflict punishment if evil agency is suspected to have
caused the death, may be absent.
