went and looked in, but it was so dark I could see nothing at first, so stepped inside; when, getting accustomed to the semi-darkness, I saw a large python, some ten or twelve feet long, hanging from the ridge pole of the hut immediately over a child about two years old that was calmly sleeping. To snatch up the child and walk out was the work of a moment. I then found that the woman who had pointed to the door of the hut was the mother of the child—her gratitude to me for delivering her child from certain death can be more easily imagined than described. Upon asking why she had not acted as I had done, she replied she dare not have interfered with the snake in the way I had done. I afterwards asked several of the more intelligent natives of Brass if the Ju-Ju law did not allow a mother to save her child in such a case. Some said she was a fool woman, and that she could have taken her child away the moment she saw it in danger; but others said had she done so, she would have been liable to be killed herself or pay a heavy fine to the Ju-Ju priests; and I am inclined to believe the latter version to be correct.[1]
Amongst other curious customs these people make use of the feather ordeal, to find out robbery, witchcraft, and adultery, &c. In this ordeal it rests a great deal with the Ju-Ju man who performs it whether it proves the party guilty or not. This ordeal is performed as follows:—The Ju-Ju man takes a feather from the underpart of a fowl's wing, making choice of a stronger or weaker one, according
- ↑ One good thing the missionaries have done since they have been in Brass, and that is, that, of persuading the natives, or at least the greater part of them, to give up the worship of this snake; and this part must have included the most influential portion of Brass society, for since about the year 1884 the Ju-Ju snake is killed wherever seen without any disastrous consequences to the killer.
