and by night stretching a line hung with bells from stake to stake, so that the least touch of a canoe on it set the bells ringing and the captors on the alert. The opinion was that unless the Government intervened the imprisoned Fans would gradually get killed and eaten by their fellow tribesmen, and then there will be a brief peace in that corner. They seem, I must say, to be a nice set down in that Eliva Z'onange, for they had eaten a returning communicant from the Catholic mission a few weeks before I reached Lembarene; but this is mere chop palaver, for the cannibalism of the Fan is not a sacrificial cannibalism like that of the Niger Delta tribes, so we will leave it on one side and return to the gateways.
Frequently a sapling is tied horizontally near the ground across the entrance. Dr. Nassau could not tell me why, but says it must never be trodden on. When the smallpox, a dire pestilence in these regions, is raging, or when there is war, these gateways are sprinkled with the blood of sacrifices, and for these sacrifices and for the payments of heavy blood fines, &c., goats and sheep are kept. They are rarely eaten for ordinary purposes, and these West Coast Africans have all a perfect horror of the idea of drinking milk, holding this custom to be a filthy habit, and saying so in unmitigated language.
The villagers eat the meat of the sacrifice, that having nothing to do with the sacrifice to the spirits, which is the blood, for the blood is the life.[1]
Beside the few spirits that he Bantu regards himself as having got under control in his charms, he has to worship the uncontrolled army of the air. This he does by sacrifice and incantation.
The sacrifice is the usual killing of something valuable as an offering to the spirits. The value of the offering in these S.W. Coast regions has certainly a regular relationship to the value of the favour required of the spirits. Some favours are worth a dish of plantains, some a fowl, some a goat and some
- ↑ Care must be taken not to confuse with sacrifices propitiations of spirits; the killing of men and animals as offerings to the souls of deceased persons.
