[Note: this transcription was produced by an automatic OCR engine]

PEN TECOSTE 2 29

bamboo, fibres and straw, and modelled throughout
in the same way as the head. They are covered
with varnish, and every detail reproduced, including
dress, ornaments and caste signs. In their right
hands these statues carry a “bubu” or shell horn,
and in their left, a pig’s jaw. The shoulders are
modelled in the shape of faces, and from these,
occasionally, sticks protrude, bearing the heads of
dead sons, so that such a statue often has three or
four heads. These figures stand along the walls of
the gamal, smiling with expressionless faces on their
descendants round the fires, and are given sacrifices
of food.

Side by side with this ancestor-worship there goes
a simpler skull-cult, by which a man carries about the
head of a beloved son or wife, as a dear remembrance
of the departed. Among a flourishing population it
would naturally be impossible to obtain such objects,
but here, where the people are rapidly decreasing in
number, a statue often enough loses its descendants,
whereupon others have no objection to sell it.

The taste for plastic art shows in other things as
well. I found several grotesque dancing—masks and
sticks, made for some special dance. The feeling
for caricature expressed in these articles is extra-
ordinary and amusing even, from a European point
of view. Here, too, the Semitic type appears, and
the natives seem to delight in the hooked noses, thick
lips and small chins. I gathered a rich harvest of
these curios near the little island of Hambi; un-
fortunately Mr. Paton came to take me home before