8o2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



One important thought in particular is not peculiar to fetich-faith, 

 but is mixed with the religions of most people ; but the negro suffers 

 more than any other man from the fear of ghosts. " In the foaming 

 water, in the dazzling lightning, in the murmuring wind, he sees the 

 working of self-existing spiritual beings. And why should we deprive 

 an anxious human heart of the comforting faith that a piece of hide or 

 a dried snake-head carefully wrapped up and worn about the body can 

 protect him ? " 



Every Congo negro carries a M'kissi upon himself ; and there may 

 be thousands of kinds of them that escape the eyes of the white man. 

 The N'ganga, or medicine -man, is usually the fabricant of the fe- 

 tich, and whatever he finds good to impose upon his simple-minded, 

 credulous brethren for a high price, sewed up in cloth or leather or 

 inclosed in a goat's horn, is doubly valuable in the eyes of its new pos- 

 sessor, because he believes that his M'kissi stands in a personal relation 

 to himself ; and he can not be induced to give it up to a white man 

 for any price. Among these amulets are dried snakes and lizards' 

 heads, little pieces of skin, feathers of certain birds, and parts of known 

 poison-plants. The eye-teeth of leopards are an exceedingly valu- 

 able fetich on the Kroo coast, and it is easy to buy with them articles 

 of vastly more real value, like ivory rings, etc. The Kabinda negroes 

 wear a little brown shell, very much like our Linnaeus, on their necks. 

 The shells are sealed with wax, and are made, perhaps, vessels contain- 

 ing masric medicines. The larg-e snail-shells found in the Cassava or 

 Manioc fields on the Kuilu Niadi are also M'kissi, and are set in the 

 fields by the women who till them to protect their plantations. One 

 of the chiefs in the upper Kuilu Niadi, in N'kuangila, has a M'kissi 

 against the tornado: it is an antelope-horn. On the approach of a 

 storm the king calls his people together ; the horn is stuck in the 

 ground, and a dance is begun around it, which is kept up, in spite of 

 wind and rain, till the tornado is over. Every house in the village has 

 its M'kissi ; they are frequently put over the door or brought inside, 

 and then they protect the house from fire and robbery. These penates 

 of the negroes are sometimes figures very artistically cut in wood or 

 ivory, and show a certain degree of native skill and taste in the peo- 

 ple. But it is not the guardians of his house only that the negro thus 

 represents in material figures ; he also gives corporeal form to diseases, 

 like small-pox, syphilis, and fever. Every town has its war-fetich ; 

 and the principle of creation is represented in male and female M'kissi. 

 The ITt/phcene palm-tree on the Kuilu shows how the negro sees a 

 spirit at work in the wonders of Nature which he can not explain. 

 That tree was M'kissi to the whole village. Good medicines with 

 which the negroes are acquainted, or of which they experience the salu- 

 tary effects, are also called M'kissi. A negro called a dose of castor- 

 oil which I gave him, 3Pkissi mbote, or good medicine. 



The white man mondela or mundele is regarded by tribes which 



