nings, except the doors, of their houses at night in order to
prevent the incursions of these unquiet spirits. When a mission station
was founded in their country, the Mafulu were amazed that the
missionaries should sleep alone in rooms with open doors and windows,
through which the ghosts might enter.[325]

[Sidenote: Burial customs of the Mafulu.]

Common people among the Mafulu are buried in shallow graves in the
village, and pigs are killed at the funeral for the purpose of appeasing
the ghost. Mourners wear necklaces of string and smear their faces,
sometimes also their bodies, with black, which they renew from time to
time. Instead of wearing a necklace, a widow, widower, or other near
relative may abstain during the period of mourning from eating a
favourite food of the deceased. A woman who has lost a child, especially
a first-born or dearly loved child, will often amputate the first joint
of one of her fingers with an adze; and she may repeat the amputation if
she suffers another bereavement. A woman has been seen with three of her
fingers mutilated in this fashion.[326] The corpses of chiefs, their
wives, and other members of their families are not buried in graves but
laid in rude coffins, which are then deposited either on rough platforms
in the village or in the fork of a species of fig-tree. This sort of
tree, called by the natives _gabi_, is specially used for such burials;
one of them has been seen supporting no less than six coffins, one above
the other. The Mafulu never cut down these trees, and in seeking a new
site for a village they will often choose a place where one of them is
growing. So long as the corpse of a chief is rotting and stinking on the
platform or the tree, the village is deserted by the inhabitants; only
two men, relatives of the deceased, remain behind exposed to the stench
of the decaying body and the blood of the pigs which were slaughtered at
the funeral feast. When decomposition is complete, the people return to
the village. Should the coffin fall to the ground through the decay of
the platform or the tree on which it rests, the people throw away all
the bones except the skull and the larger bones of the arms and legs;
these they bury in a shallow grave under the platform, or put in a box
on a burial tree, or hang up in the chief's house.[327]

[Sidenote: Use made of the skulls and bones at a great festival.]

The skulls and leg and arm bones of chiefs, their wives, and other