Page:The land of fetish.pdf/25

 These are arranged in regular order so as to form a complete gamut, and fastened above the halves of calabashes. It is in fact a native dulcimer, in which wood takes the place of glass. They have also a kind of kettledrum, in which the skin is stretched across half an enormous calabash, highly polished and sometimes elaborately carved. Another instrument is a species of zither, having ten strings, all of which are made of some vegetable fibre, though I have somewhere read that it is considered impossible to obtain strings suitable for stringed instruments from such a source. Some of their tunes are rather pleasing, though perhaps monotonous; but if, as some musicians assert, repetition may be considered a beauty, the Jolloffs may be well satisfied with their national music.

The Jolloffs have a curious burial custom. The body of the deceased is laid out in the inclosure, or yard, which surrounds every Jolloff house, where the ladies of the family prepare the kous-kous, and their lord and master prays at morning and evening; and, when it is about to be carried out for sepulture, the funeral party, instead of taking it through the gate, proceed to demolish the whole fence. They consider that it would be fatal to the deceased's hopes of future bliss if his body passed through any gate before he