39. It is remarkable, however, that in case of a sentence of death, nobody will take upon himself to be the executioner. Every one throws his stone, or gives his blow with the hatchet, carefully avoiding to give a mortal blow. At a later epoch, the priest will stab the victim with a sacred knife. Still later, it will be the king, until civilization invents the hired hangman. See Bastian's deep remarks upon this subject in Der Mensch in der Geschichte, iii. Die Blutrache, pp. 1-36. A remainder of this tribal habit, I am told by Professor E. Nys, has survived in military executions till our own times. In the middle portion of the nineteenth century it was the habit to load the rifles of the twelve soldiers called out for shooting the condemned victim, with eleven ball-cartridges and one blank cartridge. As the soldiers never knew who of them had the latter, each one could console his disturbed conscience by thinking that he was not one of the murderers. 40. In Africa, and elsewhere too, it is a widely-spread habit, that if a theft has been committed, the next clan has to restore the equivalent of the stolen thing, and then look itself for the thief. A. H. Post, Afrikanische Jurisprudenz, Leipzig, 1887, vol. i. p. 77. 41. See Prof. M. Kovalevsky's Modern Customs and Ancient Law (Russian), Moscow, 1886, vol. ii., which contains many important considerations upon this subject. 42. See Carl Bock, The Head Hunters of Borneo, London, 1881. I am told, however, by Sir Hugh Law, who was for a long time Governor of Borneo, that the "head-hunting" described in this book is grossly exaggerated. Altogether, my informant speaks of the Dayaks in exactly the same sympathetic terms as Ida Pfeiffer. Let me add that Mary Kingsley speaks in her book on West Africa in the same sympathetic terms of the Fans, who had been represented formerly as the most "terrible cannibals." 43. Ida Pfeiffer, Meine zweite Weltriese, Wien, 1856, vol. i. pp. 116 seq. See also Muller and Temminch's Dutch Possessions in Archipelagic India, quoted by Elisee Reclus, in Geographie Universelle, xiii. 44. Descent of Man, second ed., pp. 63, 64. 45. See Bastian's Mensch in der Geschichte, iii. p. 7. Also Grey, loc. cit. ii. p. 238. 46. Miklukho-Maclay, loc. cit. Same habit with the Hottentots. CHAPTER IV MUTUAL AID AMONG THE BARBARIANS The great migrations. New organization rendered necessary. The village community. Communal work. Judicial procedure. Inter-tribal law. Illustrations from the life of our contemporaries. Buryates. Kabyles. Caucasian mountaineers. African stems.