of m’boundou in it. When the poison took effect, he had 
to jump successfully the three trees. If he were able to 
clear all three, he was innocent. But if he stumbled or 
fell over any one of them, he was allowed to lie there 
and die. 
Among the Boubanguis, the accused was isolated for 
three days before the trial. He was then bound and cov- 
ered with wood to prevent his slightest movement. On 
the day of the ordeal, a refusal to drink the poison es- 
tablished his guilt, and he was decapitated. If he accepted 
the drink, he was left bound all day. The medicine men 
returned that night. If he were still alive, he was judged 
innocent. In this tribe, the medicine men always pre- 
pared the poison secretly. (Lasnet and Boyé, 1911) 
In both of the above cases, a heavy emission of urine 
during the ordeal was usually a sign of recovery and, 
hence, innocence. Also, in the trials of sorcerers, the 
people believed that an examination of the dead person’s 
entrails would yield a number of small white pellets 
which represented the heads of the people killed by the 
spells he had cast. 
Infrequently, in the Congo, the medicine men resorted 
to the eastern African practice of making a mixture of 
repugnant materials to test the good faith of the accused 
in minor cases. However, their interpretation differed 
from that of the East in that distaste or retching by the 
accused denoted guilt. This trial was resorted to only 
when m boundou or n’kassa were not available. 
In contrast to the rest of Central Africa, there was 
found among the Azande people of the Northern Congo- 
French Equatorial Africa region a lessening in severity 
of human ordeals reminiscent of East Africa. They re- 
ferred to the ordeal as ‘‘consulting the poison oracle, ”’ 
who supposedly lived in lenge. In these consultations, 
the question was decided by the action of the poison on 
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