el and placed in the house which the dead man inhabited
during his life. But the teeth have been previously extracted from the
skull and converted into a necklace for herself by the sister of the
deceased. After a time the ribs are distributed by the son among the
relatives. The principal widow gets two, other near kinsfolk get one
apiece, and they wear these relics under their arm-bands. The
distribution of the ribs is the occasion of a great festival, and it is
followed some time afterwards by a still greater feast, for which
extensive preparations are made long beforehand. All who intend to be
present at the ceremony send vessels of coco-nut oil in advance; and if
the deceased was a great chief the number of the oil vessels and of the
guests may amount to two thousand. Meantime the giver of the feast
causes a scaffold to be erected for the reception of the skull, and the
whole art of the wood-carver is exhausted in decorating the scaffold
with figures of turtles, birds, and so forth, while a wooden dog acts as
sentinel at either end. When the multitude has assembled, and the
orchestra of drums, collected from the whole neighbourhood, has sent
forth a far-sounding crash of music, the giver of the feast steps
forward and pronounces a florid eulogium on the deceased, a warm
panegyric on the guests who have honoured him by their presence, and a
fluent invective against his absent foes. Nor does he forget to throw in
some delicate allusions to his own noble generosity in providing the
assembled visitors with this magnificent entertainment. For this great
effort of eloquence the orator has been primed in the morning by the
sorcerer. The process of priming consists in kneeling on the orator's
shoulders and tugging at the hair of his head with might and main, which
is clearly calculated to promote the flow of his rhetoric. If none of
the hair comes out in the sorcerer's hands, a masterpiece of oratory is
confidently looked forward to in the afternoon. When the speech, for
which such painful preparations have been made, is at last over, the
drums again strike up. No sooner have their booming notes died away over
land and sea, than the sorcerer steps up to the scaffold, takes from it
the bleached skull, and holds it in both his hands. Then the giver of
the feast goes up to him, dips a bunch of dracaena leaves in a vessel of
oil, and smites the skull with it, saying, "Thou art my father!" At that
the drums again beat loudly. Then