Meanwhile let us cross the continent to Delagoa Bay. The neighbourhood of Delagoa Bay, together with a large extent of country to the north in Portuguese and across the border in British territory, is occupied by various branches of a Bantu people frequently known as Shangaans, but which it is convenient to call the Thonga, a name proposed by M. Henri Junod, a Swiss Protestant missionary. The tribe more immediately around the Bay is called the Baronga. The rites of purification practised by the Thonga on different occasions--among others, notably after a death--are very remarkable, and indicate a considerable preoccupation with sexual matters. These rites have been carefully described by M. Junod, but {216} they have not yet been sufficiently studied to enable us to pronounce on the meaning of them all. I shall therefore only refer to one or two. The death-pollution affects not merely all who come into contact with the corpse; it affects the entire kin, and indeed the whole of the village in which the deceased resided, whether related to him or not. But it affects especially his wives, and among these his principal or “great” wife. Like the grave-diggers who have been handling the corpse, she is required to take a sweat-bath. She is required, moreover, to fumigate herself over a fire of dry grass from the roof of the hut, mingled with cock’s dung (not hen’s). A reed or a strip of palm-leaf with a few other leaves suspended to it is then put round her waist. She enters the hut, which has been already unroofed, wailing to her deceased husband, and crawls out again by the hole at the back made to remove the corpse, as if she were herself a corpse. She cannot remain there. A new hut is therefore built for her; and there she must afterwards sleep, until the days of her purification are accomplished and she passes into the possession of her husband’s kinsman to whom she is assigned. Even for the subordinate wives (who have their own rites of purification to observe) it would be dangerous to sleep on the very ground where they have been accustomed to meet the deceased: hence their huts must also be removed. It is difficult to understand what danger they are exposed to, unless it be assaults from the ghost. The huts they occupy do not seem to be polluted, at least beyond the general pollution of the village, or they could not continue to occupy them. But the sites must be changed; and this can hardly be for any other purpose than to mystify the ghost.[216.1] {217}