by maceration with water. If he wished to kill his victim 
outright, he would mix with the paste one of the Strych- 
nos barks (probably WS. Icaja). The accused man was made 
to stand on a stone or a marked spot, and was not al- 
lowed to move from it during the ordeal. All the inhab- 
itants turned out for the occasion, the girls with their 
skin painted, and the young men with their showiest 
ornaments. Dancing and singing accompanied the trial. 
The proclamation of guilt was the act of purging or 
vomiting. 
In the same area of the Congo, a different procedure 
existed. The poison bark was finely ground and mixed 
to a paste from which five small loaves were made. These 
were fed to the defendant over a period of fifteen min- 
utes, while the onlookers called upon Moloki, the evil 
spirit, tocome out. If death or vomiting resulted, the 
man was judged, respectively, guilty or innocent. If 
purging occurred, he was declared guilty, and was given 
a chicken to eat and enough palm wine to intoxicate him. 
He was then buried alive to prevent the evil spirit from 
escaping from his body with his last breath. A large fire 
was kept burning over the grave for three days, after 
which time the body was exhumed and eaten. An inno- 
cent man, however, was carried around the village and 
decorated with beads, while his accuser paid a pig as a 
fine. (Torday, 1913) 
Among these people, there was one alternative to sub- 
mitting to the ordeal. The person could swear innocence 
by m’bondo. If he were perjuring himself, it was believed 
that he would die of dysentery within several days. 
(Johnston, 1908) 
It may be mentioned in passing that the majority of 
the natives of West Africa believed so implicitly in the 
justice of the ordeal that if an innocent man should suc- 
cumb to the effects of the poison, he would usually not 
[ 303 ] 
