ere strangled.

Ordinary people are buried in their own houses, which generally decay
afterwards. Often the widow had to sleep beside the decaying body
for one hundred days.

Being short of boys, I could not visit many of the villages inland,
and I stayed on at the mission station, where there was generally
something for me to do, as the natives frequently came loitering
about the station. I made use of their presence as much as possible
for anthropological measurements, but I could not always find willing
subjects. Everything depends on the humour of the crowd; if they make
fun of the first victim, the case is lost, as no second man is willing
to be the butt of the innumerable gibes showered on the person under
the instruments. Things are more favourable if it is only fear of
some dangerous enchantment that holds them back, for then persuasion
and liberal gifts of tobacco generally overcome their fears. The best
subjects are those who pretend to understand the scientific meaning
of the operation, or the utterly indifferent, who never think about
it at all, are quite surprised to be suddenly presented with tobacco,
and go home, shaking their heads over the many queer madnesses of white
men. I took as many photographs as possible, and my pictures made quite
a sensation. Once, when I showed his portrait to one of the dandies
with the oiled and curled wig, he ran away with a cry of terror at his
undreamt-of ugliness, and returned after a short while with his hair
cut. His deformed nose, however, resisted all attempts at restoration.

The natives showed great reluctance in bringing me skulls and
skeletons. As the bones decay very quickly in the tropics, only skulls
of people recently deceased can be had. The demon, or soul, of the
dead is supposed to be too lively as yet to be wantonly offended; in
any case, one dislikes to disturb one's own relatives, while there
is less delicacy about those of others. Still, in course of time,
I gathered quite a good collection of skulls at the station. They
were brought carefully wrapped up in leaves, fastened with lianas,
and tied to long sticks, with which the bearer held the disgusting
object as far from him as possible. The bundles were laid down, and
the people watched with admiring disgust as I untied the ropes and
handled the bones as one would any other object. Everything that had
touched the bones became to the natives an object of the greatest
awe; still they enjoyed pushing