AUU JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS

outside his parents' hut at night as a sign that he is
dead, and he is buried in the bush. When the
children emerge again they are supposed to be born
anew, they are not allowed to recognise their parents
and friends in the village until they have been intro-
duced to them again. One definite mark they bear
with them from the bush, the mark of 'tattooing'.
The tattooing varies with the tribes: in some tribes
a woman's body from the neck to the navel is
elaborately and beautifully carved. 'Carved* is a
better word than 'tattooed5 to convey the effect, for
tattooing to a European means a coloured pattern
pricked on the skin, but the native tattoo marks are
ridged patterns cut in the flesh with a knife.

The school and the devil who rules over it are at
first a terror to the child. It lies as grimly as a public
school in England between childhood and manhood.
He has seen the masked devil and has been told of
his supernatural power; no human part of the devil is
allowed to show, according to Dr. Westermann,
because it might be contaminated by the presence of
the uninitiated, but it seems likely also because the
unveiled power might do harm; for the same reason
no one outside the school may see the devil unmasked
,for fear of blindness or death. Even though the
initiates of his particular school, who have seen, as it
were, the devil in his off-moments, know him to be,
say, the local blacksmith, some supernatural feeling
continues to surround him. It is not the mask which
is sacred, nor the blacksmith who is sacred; it is the
two in conjunction, but a faint aura of the super-
natural continues to dwell in either part when they
are separate; so the blacksmith will have more power