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interviews with various informants, asking for their expert 

 advice in my difficult position. 



I was told, unanimously and emphatically, that ghosts 

 (Bo'iJ are absolutely innocuous ; because they are like a shadow 

 they cannot hurt. That people should fear beings with no 

 power to hurt, my informants could not believe, indeed they 

 seemed amused by the idea. They asserted that the ghost 

 could not have been a Bo'i, because a spirit can neither talk 

 nor make a noise, and it was a public fact that in my house 

 some noises, as of footsteps and voices, had been heard. My 

 men advised me, in the first place, not to sleep in the house, 

 and if I had to remain there not to sleep alone. I remarked 

 that nobody was likely to risk his life so lightheartedly, 

 whereupon they warned me of the extreme folly of putting 

 out my hurricane lamp at night, as I was known to do, which 

 was a plain invitation to the Bard'u to come and do his hor- 

 rible work. The most hopeful feature of the whole affair, how- 

 ever, was that as a white man I was to a great extent, and 

 perhaps completely, immune from the evil attempts of even 

 the most skilled and malicious Bard'u. The future has shown 

 that my Mailu friends were right, since all the attempts of the 

 Baraus have failed, so far as concerns myself. 



As in all other tribes, the Bard'us are considered in the 

 Mailu tribe to be the real cause of death. Using Prof. 

 Seligman's words: — ''Except in the case of very old folk, 

 death was not admitted to occur without some obvious cause, 

 such as a spearthrust. Therefore when vigorous and active 

 members of the community die it becomes necessary to explain 

 their fate, and such deaths are firmly believed to be produced 

 by sorcery." In Mailu a Bard'u from another village, always 

 a hostile one, is suspected of having been the cause of the evil 

 deed. There are, of course. Bard' us in all villages, even in 

 Mailu, as mentioned before, though no one will openly admit 

 it. But these, or even those from a friendly village, would 

 never be suspected of an attempt against a Mailu citizen. To 

 the west there were no evil sorcerers, a fact which coincides 

 also with the generally friendly relations between those people 

 and the Mailu. On the other hand, the eastern neighbours 

 of the Mailu were greatly dreaded as highly maleficent 

 sorcerers. All the villages east of Derehdi are simply 

 swarming with dangerous Bard' us. These villages had been on 

 hostile terms with the Mailu in the olden days, and, curiously 

 enough, the villagers between Port Glasgow and Gadaisiu, in 

 Orangerie Bay, are considered to be the most atrociously 

 criminal and the most virulent of sorcerers. As far as it was 

 possible to ascertain, I found that in the past these villages 

 had not been on terms of intense hostility with the Mailu; 



