Our viands

of the oxen for wood.' Nor was it only among the Jews that oxen were used for sacrifices : the Greeks and Romans sacrificed white bulls to Jupiter, whilst the cow was sacred to Juno, as it was to Isis in Egypt. In the latter country the bull Apis was, as is well known, an object of idolatry, being distinguished by special marks, and numerous mummies of this sacred bull may be seen in the British Museum. In India, Siva the destroyer rides upon a bull, and the cow is as much venerated among the Brahmins as it was in ancient Egypt, some of the Indian princes being obliged to pass through a golden image of a cow in order to become regenerated, and raised to the Brahminical caste. There is evidently something of a sacrificial origin in the eating of beef at Christmas, for it has undoubtedly a reference to the birth of Christ in the cow-shed, in remem- brance of which event, the old superstition says, all oxen kneel in adoration at twelve o'clock on Christmas Eve. All through Africa the ox is much in favour as an article of food, and also as a beast of burden. James Bruce's assertion that the Abyssinians sometimes cut steaks from the living animal has been verified by later travellers, but it is to be hoped the practice is not general. Cattle in vast numbers are slaughtered apparently as sacrifices among the Zulu tribes on great occasions; thus we are told that on the election of Lo Benguela, whose name has been so prominently before the world of late, as king of the Matabele, his first act of sovereignty was to superintend the slaughter of cattle brought as an offering to him. ' Each tribe contributed a small troop, and from each lot six, ten, or a dozen were, selected. The black were killed first ; then the black and white speckled ; and lastly, CHRISTMAS FARE 73 the coloured ones. The first were offered to the manes of his father ; the second, to the Molimo or Great Spirit ; and the rest for other purposes. The king made a short speech as he pointed out each victim ; and then the sacrificer, holding his assegai just as one would hold a pin, placed its point low down behind the shoulder blade, where it does not spoil the skin for a shield, assuring himself by a gentle titillating motion that it was rightly directed.' * What a coronation ceremony, and what an idea it gives us of the sanguinary character of these dusky kings and the despotic power they wield over their subjects. ' Of course,' Baines continues, ' the slaughter of so many oxen in so con- fined a space was a work of difficulty, especially when some had fallen, and the rest maddened by the sight and smell of blood, made frantic efforts to escape, but there was no con- fusion. The place where the king had dismounted was kept clear by a circle of Majokkas, bound in honour to die upon the spot rather than let him be incommoded ; others formed rings round each lot of cattle, and when two heaps had fallen, and there was no room for more in the kotla, the rest were killed outside, as the king successively devoted them. In the evening the carcases were skinned and cut up, and next day the king distributed the meat to his newly- acquired subjects.'