9 6 
The Minor Tribes 
dates from the days about 1840, when men were 
mad to find the “Lost Tribes,” as if they had 
not quite enough to do with the two which remain 
to them. 
The Mpongwe and their neighbours have 
advanced a long step beyond their black brethren 
in Eastern Africa. No longer contented with 
mere Fetishes, the Egyptian charms in which 
the dreaded ghost “sits,” 1 meaning, is “bound,” 
they have invented idols, a manifest advance toward 
that polytheism and pantheism which lead through 
a triad and duad of deities to monotheism, the 
finial of the spiritual edifice. In Eastern Africa 
I know but one people, the Wanyika near Momba- 
sah, who have certain images called “ Kisukas;” 
they declare that this great medicine, never shown 
to Europeans, came from the West, and Andrew 
Battel (1600) found idols amongst the people 
whom he calls Giagas or Jagas, meaning Congoese 
chiefs. Moreover, the Gaboon pagans lodge their 
idols. Behind each larger establishment there is a 
dwarf hut, the miniature of a dwelling-place, care¬ 
fully closed; I thought these were offices, but 
Hotaloya Andrews taught me otherwise. He 
called them in his broken English “ Compass- 
houses,” a literal translation of “ Ndgo Mbwiri,” 
and, sturdily refusing me admittance, left me as 
1 See Zanzibar City, Island, and Coast,” vol. ii. chap. v. 
