The initiation-custom is intended to tide the boys over the difficult time of puberty, and turn them into responsible men.

The whole of the adult males assist in the ceremonies.

Special men, however, are told off to tutor the youth--a lengthy business, since it entails a retirement, perhaps for six months, into the bush with their charges; who are there taught the tribal traditions, and are generally admonished, sometimes forcibly, for their good.

Further, this is rather like a retirement into a monastery for the young men, seeing that during all the time they are strictly taboo, or in other words in a holy state that involves much fasting and mortification of the flesh.

At last comes the time when their actual passage across the threshold of manhood has to be celebrated.