“No, that is their way of showing respect. They take off their hats, and you take off your shoes. But come now, let us have a bargain. Wallah! but I will get them to take off their shoes and leave them without, as you do, if you will take off your turban and leave it without, as they do.” (See Knighton’s “Private Life of an Eastern King.”)
We now come naturally to the burial of the dead, and the various ceremonies which accompany the time of mourning. Although the relatives seem so careless about the sick person, they really keep a watch, and, as soon as death actually takes place, they announce the fact by loud cries. The women are the principal mourners, and they continue to sob and shriek and moan until they are forced to cease from absolute exhaustion. They cut their bodies until the blood streams freely from their wounds, and some of them chop their own heads with their tomahawks until their shoulders and bodies are covered with blood.
The reader will probably have noticed how widely spread is this custom of wounding the body as a sign of mourning, and especially as a lamentation for the dead. We have seen that it exists in Africa, and we shall see that it is practised in many other countries. That it was practised in ancient days by the people among whom the Jews lived, we see from several passages of Scripture. See for example Deut. xiv. 1: “Ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead.” Also Jer. xvi. 6: “They shall not be buried, neither shall men lament for them, nor cut themselves, nor make themselves bald for them.” There is also the well-known passage concerning the sacrifice that the priests of Baal offered, in the course of which they “cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them.”
The body is not disposed of at once, but is suffered to remain for a considerable time, during which decomposition takes place, and is allowed to work its course until the flesh is separated from the bones. The body is watched carefully during the night; and if a passing meteor should appear in the sky, the people shout and wave firebrands in order to drive away a certain evil spirit named Yúmburbar, which is thought to be the real though invisible cause of death and all calamities, and to haunt the spot where a dead body lies for the purpose of feeding upon it.
When decomposition has done its work, the bones are carefully collected, cleaned, and painted red, after which they are wrapped up in bark, and carried about with the tribe for a time. This term being fulfilled, they are finally disposed of in various ways, according to the customs of the tribe to which they belonged. Some tribes scoop holes in soft rocks, and place the remains therein, while others prefer hollow trees for that purpose. Sometimes the body is placed in the cave without being reduced to a skeleton, and in some places the soil is of such a nature that the body becomes dried before decomposition can proceed very far. During the Exhibition of 1862 one of these desiccated bodies was exhibited in England, and called the “petrified” man. It was, however, nothing but a shrivelled and dried-up body, such as is often found in very dry soils.
Near the Murrumbidgee River, in the Wellington Valley, there is a remarkable stalactitic cavern, divided into several “halls.” This cavern is, or has been, a favorite burying-place of the aborigines, who seem to have employed it for the same purpose that Abraham purchased the cave of Machpelah. In consequence of the use of the cavern as a burial place, the natives are rather nervous about entering it, and they flatly refuse to venture into the darker recesses, for fear of the “dibbil-dibbil.” When Dr. Bennett visited it in 1832, he found in a small side cave the skeleton of a woman. The bones had been placed there nearly twenty years before.
The Parnkalla and Nauo tribes have another mode of burial, which somewhat resembles that which is employed by the Bechuanas. The body is placed in a crouching or squatting position, such as is employed by the natives when sitting, the knees being drawn up to the chin, the legs close to the body, and the hands clasped over the legs. Examples of this attitude may be seen in many of the illustrations. A circular pit or grave, about five feet in depth, is then dug, and after the body is lowered into the pit a number of sticks are laid over the grave, nearly touching one another. A thick layer of leaves and another of grass are then placed on the sticks, and over all is heaped the earth which has been dug out of the pit, so that the grave looks something like a huge anthill.
In Northern Australia the natives have a curious method of disposing of the dead. They gather the skulls together, and heap them into a circular mound, placing stones round them to keep them in their places. They do not cover the skulls, but make the tomb in an open and conspicuous place. Such a tomb is illustrated on page 765.
The blacks of the Clarence River build monuments which are somewhat similar in appearance, but are made of different materials. They place a number of stones in a circle, and in the centre they erect an upright slab of stone. They can give no reason for this custom, but only say that “black-fella make it so,” or “it belong to black-fella.” The former reply signifies that the custom has always prevailed among the natives; and the second, that the tomb shows that a native lies buried beneath the upright stone.
Some of the tribes along the Clarence River have a curious mode of disposing of the dead—a mode which certainly has its advantages in its great economy of trouble. When an old man feels that the hand of death is on him, he looks out for a hollow tree, climbs it, lets himself down to the bottom of the hollow, and so dies in his tomb.