52 A JOURNEY UP THE RIVER CONGO. 
At Palabala the natives were, at the time of my visit, 
disposed to be impudent and even aggressive towards white 
men, but during the last few months of my stay on the 
Congo, they modified their tone, owing to their commercial 
relations with Mr. Stanley’s expedition. 
They are very superstitious, and for every person that 
dies somebody is made “ndoki” (or “devil possessed ”’), 
and has to take the casca poison.* This is usually 
administered in such a way as to be merely a strong 
emetic, under the idea that the victim may “bring up” 
the devil, and cast him out with his bile. They think a 
creat deal of their “ Nkimba,” and on the south bank of 
the river, where Mr. Stanley’s influence is not as yet so 
firmly established as in the neighbourhood of Vivi, it is 
dangerous for a white man to offend these fanatics, who 
will severely beat him (as they did a young member of 
the Livingstone Mission) with their long wands or staves 
in return for fancied slights. The Nkimba are in all 
probability males undergoing circumcision, and initiation 
into the rites of marriage. They may be of any age, boys 
of eleven or men of forty; but generally the “ Nkimba- 
ship” is undergone by young men. A fuller description 
of their ceremonies and observances will be found in 
Chapter XVI. 
The people of Palabala may be said to “patronise”’ 
Christianity, a religion which, in my opinion, they are in » 
their present mental condition totally unfitted to under- 
stand. When the missionary holds a Sunday service in 
King Kongo-Mpaka’s house, some twenty or thirty idlers 
look in, in a genial way, to see what is going on, much as 
we might be present at any of their ceremonies. They 
behave very well, and imitate, with that exact mimicry - 
which only the negro possesses, all our gestures and 
actions, so that a hasty observer would conclude they 
* This “Casca” poison is prepared from the thick, hard bark of a 
large tree, Hrythrophleum Guineénse, from 40 to 100 feet in height, 
belonging to the tribe Dimorphandrex, sub-order Cxsalpiniz, Nat. 
Ord. Leguminose. See Monteiro, ‘Angola and River Congo,’ vol. i, 
pp. 61-65; and Oliver, ‘Flora of Tropical Africa,’ vol. ii. pp. 820-321. 
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