During the mourning at the door, the drums are kept going day and night, to keep the witches from the body. The lamentations go on, interspersed with praises of the dead man—his greatness, his kindness, and generosity. ‘That man gave us to eat,’ they will say; ‘we ate at his hands, he killed his fattest; were it riches, he was always giving; his mourning has gone forth far and wide; we feasted at his hands.’ Guns are fired, where available, at frequent intervals, to let people at a distance know that there is mourning at the village. When all is ready for the burial, the ‘undertakers’ fasten the body in its mat shroud to a long bamboo pole, and so carry it between them on their shoulders. The nearest relative does not as a rule go to the funeral, nor any one under age—_i.e._ who has not yet been to the mysteries; but there is a large following of other people. The men carry hoes and baskets for lifting out the earth; the women, who walk in the rear, carry the funeral offerings of porridge and beer. The site of the grave is marked out by the principal man present, and the body is laid aside under a tree while the digging goes on. When the grave is deep enough, stakes are driven in all round the sides, and two forked poles planted in the bottom, to receive the ends of the carrying-pole when the body is lowered into the grave, so that it is suspended without touching the ground. The space is covered in with cross bars on top before filling in the earth. These precautions are intended to prevent witches from getting at the dead, but are by no means universally observed. The Anyanja ‘cover with a little earth, then tread it down, then pour in much and cover it up fully’; and the Atonga, after filling in the grave, break the pole in the middle, and plant one-half at the head, and the other at the foot. The deceased’s personal possessions are put into the grave with him before the earth is filled in. Ivory and beads, if buried with their late owner, are first ground to powder between stones, to make them useless to witches and perhaps to more prosaic resurrectionists, if any such can be found to brave the terrors of the place and the risks of prosecution. When all is finished, the women lay the offerings on the grave, also the deceased’s water-jar, in which a hole is made, and gourd drinking-cup, which is broken. The ‘undertakers’ sometimes eat the offerings, but no one else touches them; it is believed that any one doing so would be seized with madness. We have already seen that some Atonga clans suspend the corpse instead of burying it; others bury in the usual way, except in the case of persons of high rank, where they lay the body on the ground and erect a fence round it, covering in the top with heavy logs.