When A Couple Is To Be Married,
If A Priest Happens To Be In The Way, They Will Send For
Him Perhaps Out Of Complaisance; But Otherwise, The Young
Lady's Papa Merely Strikes A Flint And Steel Together,
And The Ceremony Is Not Less Irrevocably Completed.
When
they die, a hatchet and a flint and steel are invariably
buried with the defunct, in case he should find himself
chilly on his long journey - an unnecessary precaution,
many of the orthodox would consider, on the part of such
lax religionists.
When they go boar-hunting - the most
important business in their lives - it is a sorcerer, with
no other defence than his incantations, who marches at
the head of the procession. In the internal arrangements
of their tents, it is not a room to themselves, but a
door to themselves, that they assign to their womankind;
for woe betide the hunter if a woman has crossed the
threshold over which he sallies to the chase; and for
three days after the slaughter of his prey he must live
apart from the female portion of his family in order to
appease the evil deity whose familiar he is supposed to
have destroyed. It would be endless to recount the
innumerable occasions upon which the ancient rites of
Jumala are still interpolated among the Christian
observances they profess to have adopted.
Their manner of life I had scarcely any opportunities of
observing. Our Consul kindly undertook to take us to one
of their encampments; but they flit so often from place
to place, it is very difficult to light upon them.
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