man, woman, and child might appropriate any article of property:  the king abstained from interfering; and if during this reign of misrule he was robbed of anything he valued he could only recover it by paying a fine.[88] Among the Basutos, when girls at puberty are bathed as usual by the matrons in a river, they are hidden separately in the turns and bends of the stream, and told to cover their heads, as they will be visited by a large serpent.  Their limbs are then plastered with clay, little masks of straw are put on their faces, and thus arrayed they daily follow each other in procession, singing melancholy airs, to the fields, there to learn the labours of husbandry in which a great part of their adult life will be passed.[89] We may suppose, though we are not told, that the straw masks which they wear in these processions are intended to hide their faces from the gaze of men and the rays of the sun.

[Seclusion of girls at puberty in the Lower Congo.]

Among the tribes in the lower valley of the Congo, such as the Bavili, when a girl arrives at puberty, she has to pass two or three months in seclusion in a small hut built for the purpose.  The hair of her head is shaved off, and every day the whole of her body is smeared with a red paint (takulla) made from a powdered wood mixed with water.  Some of her companions reside in the hut with her and prepare the paint for her use.  A woman is appointed to take charge of the hut and to keep off intruders.  At the end of her confinement she is taken to water by the women of her family and bathed; the paint is rubbed off her body, her arms and legs are loaded with brass rings, and she is led in solemn procession under an umbrella to her husband’s house.  If these ceremonies were not performed, the people believe that the girl would be barren or would give birth to monsters, that the rain would cease to fall, the earth to bear fruit, and the fishing to be successful.[90] Such serious importance do these savages ascribe to the performance of rites which to us seem so childish.

Sec. 2. Seclusion of Girls at Puberty in New Ireland, New Guinea, and Indonesia

[Seclusion of girls at puberty in New Ireland.]

In New Ireland girls are confined for four or five years in small cages, being kept in the dark and not allowed to set foot on the ground.  The custom has been thus described by an eye-witness.  “I heard from a teacher about some strange custom connected with some of the young girls here, so I asked the chief to take me to the house where they were.  The house was about twenty-five feet in length, and stood in a reed and bamboo enclosure, across the entrance to which a bundle of dried grass was suspended to show that it was strictly ‘tabu.’  Inside the house were three conical structures about seven or eight feet in height, and about ten or twelve feet in circumference at the bottom, and for about four feet from the ground, at which point they tapered