Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 43.djvu/585

Rh for water applied to ordinary uses, can not be relied upon for the perfect sanitation of water intended for drinking. This conclusion is confirmed by the recent experience of some towns in Massachusetts. Continued outbreaks of typhoid fever in Lowell and Lawrence were ascribed by the State Board of Health in 1890-'91 to the admission of typhoid-fever excreta into the river from towns higher up the stream, where it was known to have existed. Newburyport has for the past ten years, or since the introduction of a public water supply, been comparatively exempt from typhoid fever; but recently, in consequence of a scarcity of water, the water company began pumping a part of its supply from the river and distributing it to the inhabitants in the face of expert warning against doing so. In January, 1893, the cases of typhoid fever, following closely after a similar prevalence in Lowell, suddenly rose from an average of less than one a month to thirty-four in January, with five deaths.

East African Superstitions.—Mrs. French-Sheldon, who traveled in Africa from Teita to Kilimegalia and secured a propinquity to the natives under natural conditions rarely enjoyed by white travelers, became acquainted with some very curious superstitions among them. The people of Taveta have an idea that the preservation of the skull preserves the spirit of the dead, and that the congregation of the skulls of a family or tribe guarantees a future reunion. They avoid letting any stranger know of the death of one of their tribe. If a familiar face is missed, and an inquiry is made, some one promptly says, "He has gone on a journey." They have a horror of having their pictures or photographs taken. They wear certain beads and bits of wood or iron as charms to ward off evil, and as dama for various complaints. They are loath to part with these beads, beans, or bones. They will lend them to one another when suffering, but always reclaim them when their friend has been cured. The fires in the village were never allowed to go out; a special family fire might go out, but this could be resupplied or reignited by getting a blazing fagot from some friend's fire. But in the history of the tribe they had always preserved the fire, as doubtless did their prehistoric ancestors. When the Wasombo learned that Mrs. French-Sheldon intended to descend to Devil's Water, as Lake Chala was called by them, they speedily retreated to their villages, with a feeling of horror that the white woman would dare to venture into the very mouth of the devil. She therefore made her visit free from annoyance. It is believed that the Masai had a village where the crater lake now swells and gurgles, and that during a volcanic eruption of Kilimanjaro the people and their herds and poultry were blown into mid-air, and that their spirits still hang in space, without home above or below, and that the moaning and soughing of the wind through the trees and the strange rustling and mysterious noises caused by the reverberation of the rocky cliffs surrounding the lake proceed from the spirits of these poor people, their cattle and poultry. Although fish are abundant in this lake, the natives could not be induced to taste them. The same people believe that their ancestors inhabit the bodies of the Colobus monkeys, and will not under any circumstances knowingly kill or permit to be killed one of those animals; and on approaching the forest where the monkeys abide in great numbers, they preserve an odd silence, with furtive glances, and pick their steps with a precaution and almost hesitation that indicate an honest belief in their superstition.

Prehistoric Jeweled Teeth.—Among the interesting objects brought from Copan last year by Messrs. Saville and Owens, of the Peabody Museum of American Archæology and Ethnology, are several incisor teeth, each of which contains a small piece of green stone, presumably jadeite, set in a cavity drilled on the front surface of the teeth. The museum had before received from Yucatan human teeth filled in a peculiar manner, and now it has teeth from Copan filled in the same way. This is of particular interest in adding one more to the several facts pointing to Asiatic arts and customs as the origin of those of the early peoples of Central America. A most striking resemblance to Asiatic art is noticed in several of the heads carved in stone; one in particular, if seen in any collection and not labeled as to its origin, would probably pass almost