stated. In Afghanistan and in some parts of Persia the traveller, before he enters a village, is frequently received with a sacrifice of animal life or food, or of fire and incense. The recent Afghan Boundary Mission, in passing by villages in Afghanistan, was often met with fire and incense.[1] Sometimes a tray of lighted embers is thrown under the hoofs of the traveller’s horse, with the words, “You are welcome.”[2] On entering a village in Central Africa Emin Pasha was received with the sacrifice of two goats; their blood was sprinkled on the path and the chief stepped over the blood to greet Emin.[3] Amongst the Eskimos of Cumberland Inlet, when a stranger arrives at an encampment, the sorcerer goes out to meet him. The stranger folds his arms and inclines his head to one side, so as to expose his cheek, upon which the sorcerer deals a terrible blow, sometimes felling him to the ground. Next the sorcerer in his turn presents his cheek and receives a buffet from the stranger. Then they kiss each other, the ceremony is over, and the stranger is hospitably received by all.[4] Sometimes the dread of strangers and their magic is too great to allow of their reception on any terms. Thus when Speke arrived at a certain village the natives shut their doors against him, “because they had never before seen a white man nor the tin boxes that the men were carrying: ‘Who knows,’ they said, ‘but that these very boxes are the plundering Watuta transformed and come to kill us? You cannot be admitted.’ No
- ↑ Journal of the Anthropological Society of Bombay, i. 35.
- ↑ E. O’Donovan, The Merv Oasis (London, 1882), n. 58.
- ↑ Emin Pasha in Central Africa, being a Collection of his Letters and Journals (London, 1888), p. 107.
- ↑ Narrative of the Second Arctic Expedition made by Charles F. Hall, Edited by Prof. J. G. Nourse, U.S.N. (Washington, 1879), p. 269 note.
