The Yerkla-mining never bury their dead, nor in any way dispose of them. On seeing death approaching a tribesman, they make up a good fire for him, and leave the neighbourhood, not to return for a considerable time.[246] The Sakai, having buried the dead affectionately with necklaces, wallets, etc., say to him: “Do not remember any more your father, mother, or relations. Think only of your ancestors gone to another place. Your living friends will find food.” They then burn his house and desert the settlement, even abandoning standing crops.[247] Among the Kikuyu, “if a person dies in a village, that village is often burnt, and the people trek off and build elsewhere,” though much labour may have been spent on the surrounding fields. Sick people are often deserted.[248] Where land is closely settled such flight becomes impossible, and in any case it is very inconvenient; so that if any one can believe it possible to deceive the ghost, or to frighten him away by shouting at him, beating the air with boughs or firebrands, letting off arrows or guns, or to restrain him from walking by breaking the corpse’s legs, or by placing loaded “ghost-shooters” (straws filled with gunpowder) around the grave, so much the better. Many such plans are adopted, and they _must_ be believed in.[249] Affection, however, has its part in the treatment of the dead: it is reasonable to attribute to affection the beginnings of the practices of leaving food at the tomb, burying weapons or ornaments with the corpse, celebrating funerary rites with lamentations; though in time this motive may be mixed with, or superseded by, fear of the ghost, or by fear of being suspected of having murdered the deceased by sorcery, should rites be neglected or maimed. It is not uncommon to carry about some bones of the departed, to hang round one’s neck the skulls of infants untimely dead. The wild Veddas, though, having covered a corpse with boughs, they avoid the place for a long time for fear of being stoned, nevertheless have a strong feeling of good fellowship for the spirits of their dead.[250] In the eastern isles of Torres Straits, the Miriam perform an eschatological mystery, in which the recently deceased reappear on their way to the other world. The women and children take it for reality: their affections are said to be gratified; and at the same time their fears are allayed by the conviction that the ghosts, having been seen on their way to Hades, will no longer haunt them.[251] The old Norsemen believed that the dead were still united with the living by intense sympathy.[252] As rites begun in affection may become propitiatory through fear, and after prayer has been instituted may be further extended to obtain the aid of spirits or gods in hunting, war, revenge, love, agriculture, trade, or any undertaking for subsistence, riches or power, every passion in turn seeks its gratification through Animism.