Bkkry — The Sierra Leone Cannilah. 59 



The Krifis are made by God, and are invisible, except to the gifted. 

 They are lighter in complexion than the negroes, being lite white men or 

 brown men. They reside in the bush, and are called bush devils, and 

 sometimes, before the sunrise, make a noise like striking a tin can. Sometimes 

 they appear like a shine or reddish light, and they incarnate in a snake 

 called " yaro," variously known as the magic, devil, or diamond snake, and 

 they also visit people in the form of another person. They beat drums and 

 dance in the daytime, but no man can see them. 



Thus we see that the Tenme is a higher type of being than either the 

 Mendi or the Sherbro, who are still in that state which not only attributes a 

 spirit or soul to animals and plants, but also to inanimate things such as 

 stones, the rushing stream, the moving sea, from which, in his dreams, he 

 brings forth deities or powers malevolent and jealous of disposition, ever 

 ready to catch him or his property to work theii' mischievous will upon. 

 The primitive mind associates life with motion, and looks on flowing water as 

 an object of worship, and reverences it not merely as a living thing, but as the 

 dwelling-place of spirits. 



Besides the prevailing cults of animism and Islamism, we iind in West 

 Africa the various forms of ancestor-worship, to which is added fetishism, 

 while magic, witchcraft, and ordeals reach their highest development. 

 Ancestor-worship prevails as much in Africa as in China. 



Anccstor-icorsliip. — On the west coast the underlying idea seems to be that 

 a man retains the same status in the after-life that he had held in the present. 

 The kind of homage, therefore, paid to the ancestral spirits differs greatly 

 according to circumstances. A deceased chief would still have great power 

 in the land of the dead, but an ordinary person would receive only very 

 ordinary treatment. 



The African does not believe in death being the end of all things. He is 

 a firm believer in continuity of existence, and to him the next world is much 

 the same as this, only he wears a whiter shape and can do more — has more 

 power. He will remember who he was and what he did in this world, and 

 will not forget his friends and wives, relatives and children, on whom he 

 will be dependent for food. 



At death the spirit is expelled from the body forcibly, and wakes up in a 

 dazed sort of way, and has a feeling of being " bushed," that is, having lost his 

 way in the bush and being unable to find a way out. Gradually the perception 

 becomes clearer, and in about three or four days the spirit finds the grave 

 where the body has been deposited. To this it attaches itself, and expects to 

 find offerings of food placed there by its survi^'ing kin, with which it can 

 appease its hunger after its long fast. It may wander afar, but it always 



