Legal Gleanings from Africa.

but if the trunk should be left open, Damara custom permits the clothes to be lifted out and carried off. There are certain articles, however, which may be devoted to special uses, or to special persons, by a form of consecration, when the right to them is respected. A custom of this kind has prevailed from antiquity in regard to cattle and milk-vessels. Often, too, the head of the house has the right to the first use of things; in some sections they are his so long as they are whole, but as soon as they are damaged, the relatives are at liberty to take them, if they get an oppor tunity. While European civilization is undoubted ly making great headway in Africa, among many tribes, especially in the interior, an cient superstitions and primitive customs still prevail. One of the chief weaknesses of the natives of Africa is thieving. For this crime almost every tribe has its own peculiar method of detection and punishment. In Bechuanaland, the thief gets off rather easy. When a theft takes place, it is reported to the chief, who sends the town crier round to give public notice that a certain article has been stolen, and is wanted by the chief, and must be forthcoming. It is usually restored in the darkness of the night, and the culprit is thus allowed to escape detection. An English resident relates how he lost a pair of trousers, and the crier having gone round, the trousers were found next morning sus pended at the entrance of his cattle-pen. If a native has become by habit and re pute a thief, in Bechuanaland, he is punished by having his fingers forced into a pot of boiling fat; in extreme cases the whole hand is forced in. If caught in the act after this, he is punished with death. The natives of the Congo have several peculiar methods of discovering a thief, or rather of pretending to discover him. One is for the witch doctor to take a long wool len or linen thread, and holding one end

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himself, to give the other to the supposed thief; he then applies a red hot iron to the middle of the thread, and if it burns, which is not unlikely, the man is thus proven guilty, and has to replace the stolen article. MacBrair tells us of a peculiar method of detection in cases of theft in Shoa. They have an official known as the " thief-taker." When this individual is informed of a theft having been committed, he calls his servant and makes him swallow a mixture of black meal and milk, and then smoke a quantity of tobacco. This lias the effect, or supposed effect, of putting the lad into a frenzy, when his master leads him through the streets by a string tied round his body, the boy crawl ing on his hands and feet and smelling about like a dog. Presently he stops before one of the houses, having sniffed out the thief. The thief-taker enters and arrests the owner, who is regarded as the thief without any other evidence, and is compelled to pay for the stolen article according to its sworn value. In Ashanti, theft is usually punished by a fine, sornetimes, in serious cases, by death. It is the law that the thief has to restore not only the stolen property, but also the value of all produce or profit which might reason ably have been supposed to accrue from the thing stolen. This has frequently led to the shrewd proceeding of letting a theft pass unnoticed for weeks and months. If a ewe was stolen, the owner might let the matter rest for two or three years even, and when it pleased him he could demand compensa tion from the family of the thief for the value of the ewe and such lambs as it might reasonably be supposed to have borne, and the value of all the probable progeny of the latter also. In this way damages accumulate at a terrible rate. In this same country we find many other peculiar things. Wives and slaves are looked upon as property in Ashanti, and they may be pawned whenever their owner finds it necessary to pay a debtor or raise a loan.