It out—for it is poisonous—at these ceremonies. The
natives call this root amount.
In our work at Zimbabwe we unwittingly opened
several of their graves amongst the old ruins. The
corpse had been laid out on a reed mat—the mat,
probably, on which he had slept during life. His bowl
and his calabash were placed beside him. One of
these graves had been made in a narrow passage in
the ancient wads on the fortress. We were rather
horrified at what we had done, especially as a man
came to complain, and said that it was the grave of
his brother, who had died a year before ; so we filled
up the aperture arid resisted the temptation to proceed
with our excavations at that spot. After that
the old chief Ikomo whenever we started a fresh place
came and told us a relation of his was buried there.
This occurring so often, we began to suspect, and
eventually proved, a fraud. So we set sentiment
aside and took scientific research as our motto for
the future.
In the tomb of a chief it is customary to place a
bowl of beer, which is constantly replenished for the
refreshment of the spirit, for they are great believers
m making themselves agreeable to the departed, and
at the annual sacrificial feast in honour of the dead
meat and beer are always allotted to the spirits of
their ancestors.
One day as we were digging in a cave we came
across the skeleton of a goat tied on to a mat with
bark string; by its side was the carved.knife, with
portions of the goat’s hair still adhering to it. Here
we had an obvious instance of sacrifice, a sacrifice
which takes place, I believe, to avert some calamity—
famine, war, or pestilence—which at the time threatens
the community. The natives were very reticent on
the point, but visibly annoyed at our discovery. .
There is a good deal of music inherent in the
PLAYING- THE PIANO
Makalanga. One man in each village is recognised as
the bard. One of our workmen had his piano, which
was constantly at work. These pianos are very
interesting specimens of primitive musical a r t ; they
have thirty or more iron keys, arranged to scale,
fixed on to a piece of wood about half a foot square,
which is decorated with carving behind. This in