Berry — The Sierra Leone Cannibals. 65 



into a club to teri'orize a community into secrecy regarding their particular 

 ^"illainy. The members are generally the bad characters of the neighbour- 

 hood. They annoimce that they have power to enter a person's body and 

 devour his entrails or else suck his blood and make him dry up. An 

 imhealthy season, when fever and dysentery are prevalent, gives these vam- 

 pires an excellent opportunity of putting their supposed powers into force. 

 They search for an adult or child suffering from fever or dysentery and by 

 imderhand means make it known that one of theii" members has entered the 

 ^^ctim's body as a worm or a bat and is thus sapping the blood or " melting 

 the bowels." The natives, already superstitious to a degree, only too readily 

 believe the story. A confederate comes in and for a handsome " dash " 

 (present) " pulls the medicine " and professes to cure the sufferer and some- 

 times does so probably by means of quinine or chlorodyne. This is a 

 common practice in Freetown. 



Totemism. — There is another relic of totemism among the Mendi, some 

 of the people claiming to belong to the bird family, and these will not eat 

 eggs or fowls ; others are of the monkey family, and will not eat or kill 

 monkeys ; there are also fish and leopard families. There are family and 

 indi-sidual tabus which are mostly animal, but some are vegetable ; thus the 

 family of a chieftain at Bo may not eat yams, and at Moyamba a woman may 

 not look at a leopard till its claws and head have been taken off. 



Litholairy. — It is common to swear people on stones, which, although 

 sacred, are not removed but left embedded in the ground. The most powerful 

 fetish in the Mendi country is the far-famed Bandahau stone. Situated in 

 a small chieftaincy at Bo, it is visited from far and wide, and its power is 

 considered so gi-eat and potent that when a chief finds it impossible other- 

 wise to settle a palaver he aunoimces that he will swear the people on the 

 Bandahau stone. As a rule, nothing more is heard of the matter. This 

 stone came by its reputation through a woman, whose crops bad suffered much 

 from the browsing of deer, noticing one day that it appeared hotter than the 

 rest ; so she swore the deer on it, and next day they were found lying dead 

 in the field. Its fame at once spread, and offerings were made to it, and it is 

 still fed by people it kills ; for amongst these people, so powerful is the influence 

 of suggestion and of the mind over the body, that it brings about its own weird. 



Amongst the Sherbro great faith is placed in ancient steatite images, called 

 nomaloes or numori, which are dug up from time to time. Most families 

 have one, and they place it under a palm-leaf hut in the field to watch over 

 the crop. If the crop is good, the women make offerings to it ; if it is bad, they 

 abuse, re'vile, and beat the image. A family will not part with one of these 

 images; but they do not mind its being stolen if one has the pluck to do so. 



[9*j 



