522 
A NATION OF CANNIBALS. 
mirth. I had asked aid of their owner as to the meaning 
of the word " Kuklia,” which usually means fly or leap. 
They were using it to express the idea of haunting, as a 
ghost, inflicting disease or death, and the song was, “Yes, 
me going away to Manga, abroad, on white man’s land, with 
yoke on our necks ; but we shall have no yokes in death, 
and shall return and haunt and kill you.” Chorus then 
struck in, which was the name of the man who had sold 
each of them, and then followed the general laugh, in which 
at first I saw no bitterness. Tarembee, an old man, at 
least one hundred and four years old, being one of the 
sellers, in accordance with African belief, they had no 
doubt of being soon able, by ghost power, to kill even him. 
Their refrain was as if: “ Oh, oh, oh ! bird of freedom, you 
sold me 1 Oh, oh, oh ! I shall haunt' you. Oh, oh, oh ! ” 
Laughter told not of mirth, but of tears, such as were op- 
pressed, and they had no comforter. He that is higher 
than the highest regardeth. < 
About northeast of Rua we have a very large country 
called Manyuema, but by Arabs shortened in Manyema. 
It is but recently known. The reputation which the Man- 
yemas enjoyed of being cannibals prevented half-caste 
Arabs from venturing among them. The circumstantial 
details of practices as man-eaters were confirmed by two 
Arabs who, two years ago, went as far as Bambarrc and 
secured the protection and friendship of the Moerekues, 
Lord of Light Gray Parrot with Scarlet Tail, who was a 
very superior man. The minute details of cannibal orgies 
given by the Arabs’ attendants erred by the sheer excess 
of the shocking details. Had I believed a tenth part of 
what I was told I might never have ventured an inch in 
Manyema; but fortunately my mother never frightened me 
in infancy with “ bogie ” and stuff of that sort, and I am not 
liable to fits of bogiephobia, in which disease the poor pa- 
tient believes everything awful, if only it is attributed to 
the owner of a black skin. I have heard that the complaint 
was epidemic lately in Jamaica, and the planters’ mothers 
