to some bad spirit--eager to do harm--that will cast its fatal influence
over the company fleeing from the cruel spell of another.

Once the decision is made, with wonderful rapidity trees, and bushes are
cut down and the huts are raised.

* * * * *

As in civilized countries. Death amongst the Sakais exacts an exterior
manifestation of mourning, with this difference perhaps that with them
it is much more sincere because they have not the comfort of a long
expected and coveted legacy to make it a farce.

All ornaments have to be put aside; ear-rings, bracelets, necklaces,
nasal sticks, flowers, tattooing etc, for a period of time determined by
the Elder but generally for not less than six months.

Those in mourning are rigorously prohibited to sing, play, dance, marry
and even (quite a Lenten sin) to eat fish and meat on the some day.

The Sakais observe all these prescriptions with the greatest strictness
and are scandalized should any of them be infringed before the appointed
time. Whoever violates them is judged a heartless being and if a woman
loses all the consideration that was hers before.

The duration of mourning varies according to relationship. That for a
father or a mother is the same, but it is shorter for brothers and
sisters and for little children there is none at all.

In this respect the Sakais are not dissimilar to their civilized
fellow-beings who measure their grief by the black clothes they wear and
at the demise of a baby, notwithstanding its parents' desolation, make
the church-bells ring out the liveliest tunes.[17]

* * * * *

When a little Sakai opens its eyes to the light of this world no
religious ceremony greets its arrival.

The woman who is about to become a mother separates herself from the
rest of the family and retires by herself to a hut apart, where the
floor is very high. Nobody assists her at her confinement because there
is perhaps no other event in the existence of a Sakai so involved in
tenacious and perilous superstition as is that of birth. Her own husband
and the father of the new-born babe dare not cross the threshold of the
hut or make the acquaintance of his child until a long time after, that
is, until it has got some strength.

[Illustration: Grave of a Sakai man.

_p._ 194.]

It is always feared that by entering the cabin the smell of the child
may be carried into the forest by means of which