away on particular spots where their forefathers did the same before them. The fatigue which they felt is thus supposed to have passed into the leaves and to be left behind. Others use stones instead of leaves.1 Similarly in the Babar Archipelago tired people will strike themselves with stones, believing that they thus transfer to the stones the weariness which they felt in their own bodies. They then throw away the stones in places which are specially set apart for the purpose.2 A like belief and

practice in many distant parts of the world have given rise to those cairns or heaps of sticks and leaves which travellers often observe beside the path, and to which every passing native adds his contribution in the shape of a stone, or stick, or leaf. Thus in the Solomon and Banks Islands the natives are wont to throw sticks, stones, or leaves upon a heap at a place of steep descent, or where a difficult path begins, saying, "There goes my fatigue." The act is not a religious rite, for the thing thrown on the heap is not an offering to spiritual powers, and the words which accompany the act are not a prayer. It is nothing but a magical ceremony for getting rid of fatigue, which the simple savage fancies he can embody in a stick, leaf, or stone, and so cast it from him.3 An early Spanish missionary to Nicaragua, observing that along the paths there were heaps of stones on which the Indians as they passed threw grass, asked them why they did so. "Because we think," was the answer, "that thereby we are kept from weariness and hunger, or at least that we suffer less from them."4 In Guatemala also piles of stones may be seen at the partings of ways and on the tops of cliffs and mountains. Every passing Indian used to gather a handful of grass, rub his legs with it, spit on it, and deposit it with a small stone on the pile, firmly persuaded that by so doing he would restore their flagging vigour to his weary limbs." Here

1 J. G. F. Riedel, "Die Landschaft Dawan oder West-Timor," Deutsche Geographische Blätter, x. 231.

2 Id., De sluik- en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 340. 3 R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians, p. 186.

4 Oviedo, Histoire du Nicaragua (Paris, 1840), p. 42 sq. (Ternaux-Compans, Voyages, Relations et Mémoires originaux, etc.).

6 Brasseur de Bourbourg, Histoire des Nations civilisées du Mexique et de PAmérique-Centrale, ii. 564; compare

1

the rubbing of the limbs with the grass, like the Babar custom of striking the body with a stone, was doubtless a mode of extracting the fatigue from them as a preliminary to throwing it away. Similarly on the plateau between Lakes Tanganyika and Nyassa the native carriers, before they ascend a steep hill with their loads, will pick up a stone, spit on it, rub the calves of their legs with it, and then deposit it on one of those small piles of stones which are commonly to be found at such spots in this part of Africa. A recent English traveller, who noticed the custom, was informed that the carriers practise it "to make their legs light," in other words, to extract the fatigue from them. On the banks of the Kei river in Southern Africa, about seventy years ago, another English traveller noticed some heaps of stones. On inquiring what they meant, he was told by his guides that when a Caffre felt weary he had but to add a stone to the heap to regain fresh vigour.2 From other accounts of the Caffre custom we learn that these cairns are generally on the sides or tops of mountains, and that before a native deposits his stone on the pile he spits on it.3 The practice of spitting on the stone which the weary wayfarer lays on the pile is probably a mode of transferring his fatigue the more effectually to the material vehicle which is to rid him of it. We have seen that the practice prevails among the Indians of Guatemala and the natives of the Tanganyika plateau, and it appears to be observed also in similar circumstances in Corea, where the cairns are to be

iii. 486. Indians of Guatemala, when they cross a pass for the first time, still commonly add a stone to the cairn which marks the spot. See C. Sapper, "Die Gebräuche und religiösen Anschauungen der Kekchi-Indianer," Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, viii. (1895), p. 197.

1 F. F. R. Boileau, "The NyasaTanganyika Plateau," The Geographical Journal, xiii. (1899), p. 589. In the same region Mr. L. Decle observed many trees or rocks on which were placed little heaps of stones or bits of wood, to which in passing each of his men added a fresh stone or bit of wood or a tuft of grass. "This," says Mr. Decle,

"is a tribute to the spirits, the general precaution to ensure a safe return" (Three Years in Savage Africa, p. 289). A similar practice prevails among the Wanyamwezi (ibid. p. 345). Compare Grant, A Walk across Africa, p. 133 sq.

2 Cowper Rose, Four Years in Southern Africa (London, 1829), p.

147.

3 S. Kay, Travels and Researches in Caffraria, p. 211 sq.; Callaway, Religious System of the Amazulu, i. 66; D. Leslie, Among the Zulus and Amatongas (Edinburgh, 1875), p. 146 sq. Compare Lichtenstein, Reisen im südlichen Africa, i. 411.

From the primitive

found especially on the tops of passes.1 point of view nothing can be more natural than that the cairns or the heaps of sticks and leaves to which the tired traveller adds his contribution should stand at the top of passes and, in general, on the highest points of the road. The wayfarer who has toiled, with aching limbs and throbbing temples, up a long and steep ascent, is aware of a sudden alleviation as soon as he has reached the summit; he feels as if a weight had been lifted from him, and to the savage, with his concrete mode of thought, it seems natural and easy to cast the weight from him in the shape of a stone or stick, or a bunch of leaves or of grass. Hence it is that the piles which represent the accumulated weariness of many foot-sore and heavy-laden travellers are to be seen wherever the road runs highest in the lofty regions of Bolivia, Tibet, Bhootan, and Burma, in the passes of the Andes and the Himalayas, as well as in Corea, Caffraria, Guatemala, and Melanesia.

But it is not mere bodily fatigue which the savage fancies he can rid himself of in this easy fashion. Unable clearly to distinguish the immaterial from the material, the abstract from the concrete, he is assailed by vague terrors, he feels himself exposed to some ill-defined danger on the scene of any great crime or great misfortune.. The place to him seems haunted ground. The thronging memories that crowd upon his mind, if they are not mistaken by him for goblins and phantoms, oppress his fancy with a leaden weight. His impulse is to flee from the dreadful spot,

1 W. Gowland, "Dolmen and other Antiquities of Corea," Journal of the Anthropological Institute, xxiv. (1895), p. 328 sq.; Mrs. Bishop, Korea and her Neighbours, i. 147, ii. 223. Both writers speak as if the practice were to spit on the cairn rather than on the particular stone which the traveller adds to it; indeed, Mrs. Bishop omits to notice the custom of adding to the cairns. Mr. Gowland says that almost every traveller carries up at least one stone from the valley and lays it on the pile. 2 D. Forbes, "On the Aymara Indians of Peru and Bolivia," Journal of the Ethnological Society of London, ii. (1870), p. 237 sq.; G. C. Musters,

"Notes on Bolivia," Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, xlvii. (1877), p. 211; T. T. Cooper, Travels of a Pioneer of Commerce (London, 1871), p. 275; J. A. H. Louis, The Gates of Thibet, a Bird's Eye View of Independent Sikkhim, British Bhootan, and the Dooars (Calcutta, 1894), p. III sq.; Bastian, Die Völker des östlichen Asien, ii. 483. So among the Mrus of Aracan, every man who crosses a hill, on reaching the crest, plucks a fresh young shoot of grass and lays it on a pile of the withered deposits of former travellers (T. H. Lewin, Wild Races of South-Eastern India, p. 232 sq.).

to shake off the burden that seems to cling to him like a nightmare. This, in his simple sensuous way, he thinks he can do by casting something at the horrid place and hurrying by. For will not the contagion of misfortune, the horror that clutched at his heart-strings, be diverted from himself into the thing? will it not gather up in itself all the evil influences that threatened him, and so leave him to pursue his journey in safety and peace? Some such train of thought, if these gropings and fumblings of a mind in darkness deserve the name of thought, seems to explain the custom, observed by wayfarers in many lands, of throwing sticks or stones on places where something horrible has happened or evil deeds have been done. When Lieutenant Younghusband was travelling across the great desert of Gobi his caravan descended, towards dusk on a June evening, into a long depression between the hills, which was notorious as a haunt of robbers. His guide, with a terror-stricken face, told how not long before nine men out of a single caravan had been murdered, and the rest left in a pitiable state to continue their journey on foot across the awful desert. A horseman, too, had just been seen riding towards the hills. "We had accordingly to keep a sharp look-out, and when we reached the foot of the hills, halted, and, taking the loads off the camels, wrapped ourselves up in our sheepskins and watched through the long hours of the night. Day broke at last, and then we silently advanced and entered the hills. Very weird and fantastic in their rugged outline were they, and here and there a cairn of stones marked where some caravan had been attacked, and as we passed these each man threw one more stone on the heap." In the Norwegian district of Tellemarken a cairn is piled up wherever anything fearful has happened, and every passer-by must throw another stone on it, or some evil will befall him.2 In Sweden and the Esthonian island of Oesel the same custom is practised on scenes of clandestine or illicit love, with the strange addition in Oesel that when a man has lost his cattle he will go to such a spot, and, while he flings a stick or stone on it,

1 F. E. Younghusband, "A Journey Central Asia," Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, x.

across

(1888), p. 494.

2 F. Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunac, p. 274 sq.

will say, "I bring thee wood. Let me soon find my lost cattle." Far from these northern lands, the Dyaks of Batang Lupar keep up an observance of the same sort in the forests of Borneo. Beside their paths may be seen heaps of sticks or stones which are called "lying heaps." Each heap is in memory of some man who told a stupendous lie or disgracefully failed in carrying out an engagement, and everybody who passes adds a stick or stone to the pile, saying as he does so," For So-and-so's lying heap.""

But, as might perhaps have been anticipated, it is on scenes of murder and sudden death that this rude method of averting or diverting evil is most commonly practised. The custom that every passer-by must cast a stone or stick on the spot where some one has come to a violent end, whether by murder or otherwise, has been observed in practically the same form in such many and diverse parts of the world as Ireland, France, Spain, Sweden, Germany, Bohemia, Lesbos, Morocco, Armenia, Arabia, India, North America, Venezuela, Bolivia, Celebes, and New Zealand. Sometimes the scene of the murder or death may also be the grave of the victim, but it need not always be so, and in Europe, where the dead are buried in consecrated ground, the two places would seldom coincide. However, the custom of throwing stones or sticks on a grave

1 F. Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, p. 274; Holzmayer, "Osiliana," Verhandlungen der gelehrten Estnischen Gesellschaft zu Dorpat, vii. (1872), p.

73; Spenser St. John, Life in the

Forests of the Far East,2 i. 88.

3 A. C. Haddon, "A Batch of Irish Folk-lore," Folk-lore, iv. (1893), pp. 357,360; Laisnel de la Salle, Croyances et Légendes du Centre de la France, ii. 75, 77; Brand, Popular Antiquities, ii. 309; Hylten-Cavallius, quoted by Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, p. 274; K. Haupt, Sagenbuch der Lausitz, ii. 65; K. Müllenhoff, Sagen, Märchen und Lieder der Herzogthümer Schleswig, Holstein und Lauenburg, p. 125; A. Kuhn, Märkische Sagen und Märchen, p. 113; Kuhn und Schwartz, Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche, p. 85; A. Treichel, "Reisighäufung und Steinhäufung an Mordstellen," Am Ur-Quelle, vi. (1896), p.

220; Georgeakis et Pineau, Folk-lore de Lesbos, p. 323; Leared, Morocco and the Moors, p. 105 sq.; Hax. thausen, Transkaukasia, i. 222; W. Crooke, Introduction to the Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India, p. 167; J. Bricknell, The Natural History of North Carolina (Dublin, 1737), p. 380; J. Adair, History of the American Indians, p. 184; K. Martin, Bericht über eine Reise nach Nederlandsch West-Indien, Erster Theil (Leyden, 1887), p. 166; G. C. Musters, "Notes on Bolivia," Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, xlvii. (1877), p. 211; B. F. Matthes, Einige Eigenthümlichkeiten in den Festen und Gewohnheiten der Makassaren und Büginesen, p. 25 (separate reprint from Travaux de la be Session du Congrès International des Orientalistes à Leide, vol. ii.); R. A. Cruise, Journal of a Ten Months' Residence in New Zealand, p. 186.