is
allowed to enter. The directress of the rites and the older women
instruct the young girl as to the elementary facts of life, the duties
of marriage, and the rules of conduct, decorum, and hospitality to be
observed by a married woman. Amongst other things the damsel must submit
to a series of tests such as leaping over fences, thrusting her head
into a collar made of thorns, and so on. The lessons which she receives
are illustrated by mud figures of animals and of the common objects of
domestic life. Moreover, the directress of studies embellishes the walls
of the hut with rude pictures, each with its special significance and
song, which must be understood and learned by the girl.[72] In the
foregoing account the rule that a damsel at puberty may neither see the
sun nor touch the ground seems implied by the statement that on the
first discovery of her condition she hides in long grass and is carried
home after sunset on the back of an old woman.

[Seclusion of girls at puberty among the tribes of British Central
Africa.]

Among the Nyanja-speaking tribes of Central Angoniland, in British
Central Africa, when a young girl finds that she has become a woman, she
stands silent by the pathway leading to the village, her face wrapt in
her calico. An old woman, finding her there, takes her off to a stream
to bathe; after that the girl is secluded for six days in the old
woman's hut. She eats her porridge out of an old basket and her relish,
in which no salt is put, from a potsherd. The basket is afterwards
thrown away. On the seventh day the aged matrons gather together, go
with the girl to a stream, and throw her into the water. In returning
they sing songs, and the old woman, who directs the proceedings, carries
the maiden on her back. Then they spread a mat and fetch her husband and
set the two down on the mat and shave his head. When it is dark, the old
women escort the girl to her husband's hut. There the _ndiwo_ relish is
cooking on the fire. During the night the woman rises and puts some salt
in the pot. Next morning, before dawn, while all is dark and the
villagers have not yet opened their doors, the young married woman goes
off and gives some of the relish to her mother and to the old woman who
was mistress of the ceremony. This relish she sets down at the doors of
their houses and goes away. And in the morning, when the sun has risen
and all is light in the village, the two women open their doors, and
there th