[Sidenote: Sacred sticks representing the deceased ancestors of the Herero.] But the most tangible link between the worship of the fire and the worship of the dead is furnished by the sacred sticks representing the ancestors, which are kept in a bundle together with the two sticks used for kindling the fire by friction. Each of these rude idols or Lares, as we may call them, “symbolises a definite ancestor of the paternal clan, and, taken together, they may be regarded as the most sacred possession of a family. They stand in the closest relation to the holy hearth, or rather to the priestly dignity, and must therefore always remain in the same paternal clan.”[725] These sticks “are cut from trees or bushes which are dedicated to the ancestors, and they represent the ancestors at the sacrificial meals, for the cooked flesh of the victims is always set before them first. Many people always keep these sticks, tied up in a bundle with straps and hung with amulets, in the branches of the sacrificial bushes which stand on the sacred hearth (_okuruo_). The sacrificial bush serves to support the severed pieces of the victim, and thus in a measure represents an altar or table of sacrifice.”[726] When after an absence of years the people return to a village where a chief died and was buried, a new fire is kindled by friction on the old hearth, the flesh of the first animal slaughtered here is cooked in a particular vessel, and the chief hands a portion of it to every person present. “An image, consisting of two pieces of wood, supposed to represent the household deity, or rather the deified parent, is then produced, and moistened in the platter of each individual. The chief then takes the image, and, after affixing a piece of meat to the upper end of it, he plants it in the ground, on the identical spot where his parent was accustomed to sacrifice. The first pail of milk produced from the cattle is also taken to the grave; a small quantity is poured on the ground, and a blessing asked on the remainder.” Each clan, the writer adds, has a particular tree or shrub consecrated to it, and of this tree or shrub the two sticks representing the deceased are made.[727]