Note 265.4 — Chapter XII · TOTEMISM—THE BLOOD COVENANT—CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH SALIVA.

These African practices correspond with others elsewhere. When an Irish peasant wishes to welcome a friend with more than usual heartiness, he spits in his own hand ere he clasps his friend’s with it. In the East Riding of Yorkshire people stand by a brook to wish, and they spit into it: doubtless a relic of the archaic worship of water.265.4 In Central America, whenever the native traveller came to one of the altars erected everywhere on the roads to the god of travellers, he plucked a tuft of grass, rubbed it on his leg, and, spitting on it, piously deposited it, together with a stone, upon the altar.265.5 And in the last chapter I had occasion to refer to the customs of Basuto travellers, which also present the attempt at union with the god in a form analogous to those just mentioned of the Kafirs and Bissagos islanders.