of years during which this was done, appears to be variable, but I could not understand what regulated it. There was one point, however, about which they were certain, and that was that the first-born of all, rich, poor, high and low, had to be strangled and thrown away. The chief of the Kerre said, ‘If I had a child now, it would have to be thrown away,’ laughing as if it were a great joke. What amused him really was that I should be so interested in their custom.” So far as Captain Stigand could ascertain, there is no idea of sacrificing the children to the crocodiles by throwing them into the river. If a Kerre man has a first child born to him while he is on a journey away from the river, he will throw the infant away in the forest.(484) In Uganda if the firstborn child of a chief or any important person is a son, the midwife strangles it and reports that the infant was still-born. “This is done to ensure the life of the father; if he has a son born first he will soon die, and the child inherit all he has.”(485) Amongst the people of Senjero in eastern Africa we are told that many families must offer up their firstborn sons as sacrifices, because once upon a time, when summer and winter were jumbled together in a bad season, and the fruits of the earth would not ripen, the soothsayers enjoined it. At that time a great pillar of iron is said to have stood at the entrance of the capital, which in accordance with the advice of the soothsayers was broken down by order of the king, whereupon the seasons became regular again. To avert the recurrence of such a calamity the wizards commanded the king to pour human blood once a year on the base of the broken shaft of the pillar, and also upon the throne. Since then certain families have been obliged to deliver up their firstborn sons, who were sacrificed at an appointed time.(486) Among some tribes of south-eastern Africa there is a rule that when a woman’s husband has been killed in battle and she marries again, the first child she gives birth to after her second marriage must be put to death, whether she has it by her first or her second husband. Such a child is called “the child of the assegai,” and if it were not killed, death or an accident would be sure to befall the second spouse, and the woman herself would be barren. The notion is that the woman must have had some share in the misfortune that overtook her first husband, and that the only way of removing the malign influence is to slay “the child of the assegai.”(487)