122 
A Visit to Banzo Chisalla. 
the deceased’s helmet; it was a fancy article, which 
might have fitted him of Gath, with a terrific 
plume and the spoils of three horses in the san¬ 
guine hues of war. Although eight feet long 
by five broad, the coffin was said to be quite full. 
The immense respect which the Congoese bear to 
their rulers, dead as well as alive, prevented my 
verifying the accounts of the slave dealers. I 
knew that the chief who had died at Kinsembo, 
had been dried on a bamboo scaffolding over a 
slow fire, and lay in state for some weeks in 
flannel stockings and a bale of baize, but these 
regions abound in local variations of custom. 
Some declared, as we find in Proyart, that the 
corpse had been mummified by the rude pro¬ 
cess of smoking; others that it had been ex¬ 
posed for some days to the open air, the relatives 
sitting round to keep off the flies till preliminarily 
bandaged. According to Barbot (iii. 23), the 
people of Fetu on the Gold Coast and the men 
of Benin used to toast the corpse on a wooden 
gridiron; and the Vei tribe, like the Congoese, 
still fumigate their dead bodies till they become like 
dried hams. This rude form of the Egyptian rite 
is known to East as well as to West Africa: 
Kimera, late King of Uganda, was placed upon a 
board covering the mouth of a huge earthern pot 
heated from below. 
Instances are known of bodies in the Congo 
