persuasion could avail with them, and the party had to proceed to the next village.”[1]
The fear thus entertained of alien visiters is often mutual. Entering a strange land, the savage feels that he is treading enchanted ground, and he takes steps to guard against the demons that haunt it and the magical arts of its inhabitants. Thus on going to a strange land the Maoris performed certain ceremonies to make it noa (common), lest it might have been previously tapu (sacred).[2] When Baron Miklucho-Maclay was approaching a village on the Maclay Coast of New Guinea, one of the natives who accompanied him broke a branch from a tree and going aside whispered to it for a while; then going up to each member of the party, one after another, he spat something upon his back and gave him some blows with the branch. Lastly, he went into the forest and buried the branch under withered leaves in the thickest part of the jungle. This ceremony was believed to protect the party against all treachery and danger in the village they were approaching.[3] The idea probably was that the malignant influences were drawn off from the persons into the branch and buried with it in the depths of the forest. In Australia, when a strange tribe has been invited into a district and is approaching the encampment of the tribe which owns the land, “the strangers carry lighted bark or burning sticks in their hands, for the purpose, they say, of clearing and purifying the air.”[4] So when two Greek armies were
- ↑ J. A. Grant, A Walk across Africa, p. 104 sq.
- ↑ E. Shortland, Traditions and Superstitions of the New Zealanders, p. 103.
- ↑ N. von Miklucho-Maclay, “Ethnologische Bemerkungen über die Papuas der Maclay-Küste in Neu-Guinea,” in Natuurkundig Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch Indie, xxxvi. 317 sq.
- ↑ Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. 134.
