hani!ilt f° r^ ° f a p Pearance and subsequent conduct is, unsffirftsI
rfu / °°nfined t0 Tand° ’ but is used by many
o f sa c r^ ? t n ° f rC0llecting ™ r s in taxes in the way
spirits and^'t ■ 6 ° f ** amonS Bantu Sods or
to b U f VeS nSG t0 a general hesitation in West Africa
nfU C*re ° waifs and stray s of unexplained origin,
o f hpp61 • mgS beside Sods and human spirits have the habit
o f becoming lncarnate. Qnce I had to sit waiting a long
W o f aPParently Perfectly clear bush path, because in
Z t l USaSr rS/ hOStUSed to dy across the path about
thev rfi h aftern°on, and if any one was struck by it
1 i f Lcertain sPring I know of is haunted by the
to fill n, a P ,er‘ Many ladies when they have gone alone
ha rf t S ln the evening time at this forest spring
amTffi a VC7 fine pitcher standing there ready filled,
touM P n5 v eX gC iS n° r° bbery> or a* any rate they
would risk it if it were, have left their own pitcher and taken
the better looking on e ; but always as soon as they have
come within sight o f the village huts, the new pitcher has
crumbled into dust, and the water in it been spilt on the ground I
and the worst of it is, when they have returned to fetch their
own discarded pitcher, they find it also shattered into pieces.
1 here is also another class of apparition, of which I have
met with two instances, one among pure Negroes (Okyon) •
the other among pure Bantu (Kangwe). I will give the Bantu’
version of the affair, because at Okyon the incident had
happened a good time-before the details were told me, and in
the Bantu case they had happened the previous evening. But
there was very little difference in the main facts of the case
and it was an important thing because in both cases the
underlying idea was sacrificial.
The woman who told me was an exceedingly intelligent
shrewd, reliable person. She had been to the factory with
some trade, and had got a good price for it, and so was in a
good temper on her return home in the evening. She got out
of her canoe and leaving her slave boy to bring up the things
walked to her house, which was the ordinary house of a
prosperous Igalwa native, having two distinct rooms in it, and
a separate cook-house close by in a clean, sandy yard. ’ She
trod on some nastiness in the yard, and going into the cookhouse
found the slave girls round a very small and inefficient
fire trying to cook the evening meal. She blew them up for
not having a proper fire; they said the wood was wet, and
would not burn. She said they lied, and she would see to
them later, and she went into the chamber she used for a
sleeping apartment, and trod on something more on the
floor in the dark ; those good-for-nothing hussies of slaves had
not lit her palm-oil lamp, and mentally forming the opinion
that they had been out flirting during her absence, and resolving
to teach them well the iniquity of such conduct, she
sat down on her bed into a lot of messy stuff of a clammy,
damp nature.' Now this fairly roused her, for she is a notable
housewife, who keeps her house and slaves in exceedingly
good order. So dismissing from her mind the commercial
consideration she had intended to gloat over when she came
into her room, she called Ingremina and others in a tone that
brought those young ladies on the spot. She asked them how
they dared forget to light her lamp f they said they had not,
but the lamp in the room must have gone out like the other
lamps had, after burning dim and spluttering. They further
said they had not been out, but had been sitting round the fire
trying to make it burn properly. She duly whacked and pulled
the ears of all within reach. I say within reach for she is not very
active, weighing, I am sure, upwards of eighteen stone. Then
she went back into her room and got out her beautiful English
paraffin lamp, which she keeps in a box, and taking it into the
cook-house, picked up a bit of wood from the hissing, spluttering
fire, and lit it. When she picked up the wood she noticed
that it was covered with the same sticky abomination she had
met before that evening, and it smelt of the same faint ■ smell
she had noticed as soon as she had reached her house, and
by now the whole air seemed oppressive with it.
As soon as the lamp was alight she saw what the stuff
was, namely, blood. Blood was everywhere, the rest of the
sticks in the fire had it on them, it sizzled at the burning ends,
and ran off the other in rills. There were pools of it about
her clean, sandy yard. Her own room was reeking, the bed,
the stools, the floor; it trickled down the door-post; coagu