Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/208

 158 SOUTH AND EAST AFRICA. The Bechuanas are one of the finest members of the southern Bantu family. All are tall, robust, well-built, and distinguished by their graceful carriage, which may bo partly due to the fact that in certain tribes the feeble or sickly offspring are got rid of. Albinos and the deaf and dumb are thrown to the panthers ; those born blind are strangled, and when the mother dies her infant is, in some tribes, buried alive in the same grave, because he has been deprived of his natural nurse. Circumcision is imiversally practised, although there is no fixed age for performing the rite. Sometimes it is deferred till adolescence ; yet children born before the father has been circumcised would be ipso facto declared incapable of inheriting any of the paternal estate. Usually the operation is undergone between -the eighth and fourteenth year, and is accompanied by scourging, and occasionally even by tortures, in virtue of which the victims are regarded as equals of the men of the tribe, worthy to carry the shield and hurl the assegai. Girls also are initiated into womanhood and taught their duties as future wives by a long probationship passed in seclusion under the direction of elderly matrons. During this period they are subjected to several severe trials of endurance, the last of which is a hot iron bar to be held for a few seconds without uttering a cry. After this proof they are declared women ; they are smeared all over with grease, their hair is saturated with a mixture of butter and ochre ; they are clothed and decked like brides while awaiting to be purchased by their future lord. Circumcision is in no sense a religious ceremony, being merely the symbol of entrance into the state of manhood, with all its attendant privileges and responsi- bilities. Those missionaries who first penetrated into this region assure us that they sought in vain for the least indication of a belief in the supernatural world amongst the Bechuana peoples. The natives had neither gods nor idols; they never gathered together for prayer or any kind of public worship ; they neither appealed in supplication to good or evil spirits, nor even betrayed any fear of the souls of the dead. At the same time certain practices seem to be altogether inexplicable except on the supposition that they have been inspired by the desire to conjure the forces of the unknown world and render the unseen powers pro- pitious to their votaries. Thus when a tree is struck by lightning cattle are slaughtered, and similar sacrifices are made for the purpose of healing the sick or obtaining rain from above. The dead are borne to the grave through a breach made in the wall of the cabin, and care is taken to lay them in a crouched attitude with the face turned due north, that is, in the direction whence came their fore- fathers. Then the bystanders cast into the grave an acacia branch, portions of ant-hills, and tufts of herbage, emblems of the hunter's life in the woodlands. On the sepulchral mound are also placed the arms of the departed, together with the seeds of alimentary plants. But of late years the fear of unwittingly supplying the compounders of maleficent charms with the needful skulls has induced many of the tribes to bury their dead in the cabin itself, under the feet of the living. After each ceremony all those present wash their hands and feet in a large water-trough, all the time shouting Pula ! pula ! (Rain! rain!). The wizards also frequently make a show of attracting the clouds and causing them to discharge