Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/787

Rh was to catch men. I did not press him with any more questions, for I knew he would answer me with the first lie he could think of.

Numerous grave-marks are characteristic of all the roads and paths of Angola; they are, according to the degree of civilization and the



social importance of the deceased, either large earthen catafalques with towers at the corners, such as are erected by the Africo-Portuguese, simple long mounds of the form everywhere used, or a little stone-heap. Graves of the first two classes are generally sheltered by a hut or roof. Graves of the last kind, which are very often the graves of porters that have died on the road, are frequently found fresh and adorned with the staff, the belt, the provision-bag, the water-gourd, or the cooking-pot of the dead man. The best finished catafalques of earth are whitewashed and painted with pretty colored arabesques and flowers. Vessels in which food has been brought to the deceased at various times may be found scattered around the grave, together with burned clay figures of the most curious character.

Sometimes the graves contain nothing but the hair and nails of the persons to whom they are erected; for the man may have died on a journey, and have been buried among strangers. But, in order that a place may be provided near his home where his spirit may linger, and enjoy the food and drink that are regularly brought to it, one of his friends will cut off some of his hair and nails, and present them to the family to be formally buried as a symbol of the whole body, which it is not convenient to remove. The little relics are then mourned over and buried just as if they were the body itself, which is, however, moldering far away. Such a monument was the pile of wood which I found near Malansh, a copy of my drawing of which is given in Fig. 5. It may, however, be a hunter's medicine, for that was one among the explanations that were given me of its purpose. Four rough-hewed tree-trunks served as posts to hold up the structure of logs and limbs and straw. In front of the structure was a carved idol, on both