There are some other peoples who ascribe evil results to close intermarriage. Mr. Cousins informs me that the Cis-Natalian Kafirs believe “that their offspring would be of a more sickly nature if such were allowed”; and Mr. Eyles writes that the Zulus, on the border of Pondoland, regard sterility and deformity as consequences of consanguineous unions. The Australian Dieyerie, according to Mr. Gason, have a tradition that, after the creation, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, and others of the closest kin intermarried promiscuously, until the bad effects of these marriages became manifest. A council of the chiefs was then assembled to consider in what way the evil might be averted, and the result of their deliberations was a petition to the Muramura, or Good Spirit. In answer to this he ordered that the tribe should be divided into branches, and distinguished one from the other by different names, after objects animate and inanimate, such as dogs, mice, emu, rain, and so forth, and that the members of any such branch should be forbidden to marry other members of the same branch.[2046] Again, touching the Kenai, in the north-western part of North America, Richardson states, “It was the custom that the men of one stock should choose their wives from another, and the offspring belonged to the race of the mother. This custom has fallen into disuse, and marriages in the same tribe occur; but the old people say that mortality among the Kenai has arisen from the neglect of the ancient usage.”[2047] In a Greenland Eskimo tale, the father of Kakamak, finding that all his grandchildren have died before reaching the age of puberty, suggests to his son-in-law, “Perhaps we are too near akin.”[2048] Two Mohammedan travellers of the ninth century tell us that the Hindus never married a relation, because they thought alliances between unrelated persons improved the offspring.[2049] In Hadîth, the collection of Mohammedan traditions, it is said, “Marry among strangers; thus you will not have feeble posterity.” “This view,” says Goldziher, “coincides with the opinion of the ancient Arabs that the children of endogamous marriages are weakly and lean. To this class also belongs the proverb of Al-Meydânî, ‘ ... Marry the distant, marry not the near’ (in relationship).” A poet, praising a hero, says, “He is a hero, not borne by the cousin (of his father), he is not weakly; for the seed of relations brings forth feeble fruit.”[2050]