be sent to him the next morning; so that when the disease-maker hears the shell blown, he says to his friends, “That is the man whose rubbish I am burning, he is ill; let us stop burning, and see what present he will bring in the morning.” The sick man faithfully keeps his promise, and, in the morning, some present is made--pigs, mats, and such like. Whereupon the disease-maker promises he will do all he can to prevent the rubbish being again burned. Should a person die, his friends suppose that the disease-makers were not pleased with the presents made, and burned his rubbish to the end. When it is all burned they believe the person will die. Nor do the disease-makers seem to be the impostors, for should one of the craft fall ill, he fully believes some one is burning his _nohak_, and he blows the shell, and makes the presents as readily as the rest. Cruel and abominable as are many of the Polynesian methods of disposing of their sick and aged, that there is “in lowest depths a deeper still,” many African tribes furnish an illustration. In an early part of this volume mention has been made of the poor old Bakalai, whom Du Chaillu met, and who was “turned out to die.” Such cases are not without parallel. Burchell quotes such a case, as does Moffat, as occurring among the Namaquas. This latter gentleman was informed that in a certain part of the forest there was an old woman squatting all alone and seemingly dying. “On reaching the spot we beheld an object of heartrending distress. It was a venerable looking old woman, a living skeleton, sitting with her head leaning on her knees. She appeared terrified at our presence, and especially at me. She tried to rise, but, trembling with weakness, sunk again to the earth. I addressed her by the name which sounds sweet in every clime, and charms even the savage ear, ‘My mother, fear not, we are friends and will do you no harm.’ I put several questions to her, but she appeared either speechless or afraid to open her lips. I again repeated ‘Pray mother who are you and how do you come to be in this situation?’ to which she replied ‘I am a woman, I have been here four days, my children have left me here to die.’ ‘Your children?’ I interrupted. ‘Yes,’ raising her hand to her shrivelled bosom, ‘my own children, three sons and two daughters. They are gone,’ pointing with her finger, ‘to yonder blue mountain, and have left me to die.’ ‘And pray why did they leave you?’ I enquired. Spreading out her hands she replied, ‘I am old, you see, and I am no longer able to serve them; when they kill game I am too feeble to help them carry home the flesh. I am not able to gather wood to make fire, and I cannot carry their children on my back as I used to do.’ This last sentence was more than I could bear, and though my tongue was cleaving to the roof of my mouth for want of water, this reply opened a fountain of tears. I remarked that I was surprised that she had escaped the lions which seemed to