102 REPORT OF THE HARVARD AFRICAN EXPEDITION 
efficient frontier force is maintained in the district, and provided also that some 
attention is paid to the food problems of the natives. 
In certain parts of the eastern Kru coast, the use of human flesh and fat for 
charms, fetishes and sacrifices has existed sporadically until very recent times, 
and the missionaries tell many stories and cite many instances of individual 
natives who have been killed for this purpose. 
Trial by ordeal still persists among the people of Liberia. Practically all the 
tribes believe that it is a most efficacious, and even an infallible means of identify- 

No. 71. — Convicted leopard men 
ing a guilty person, and establishing his guilt. This implicit belief in the efficacy 
of the trial by ordeal naturally makes the superstitious people attach the greatest 
importance to it, since a greater or less degree of faith in witchcraft is almost uni- 
versal among them. In Liberia the commonest form of it consists in compelling 
the suspected person to drink a concoction known as sasswood, which is prepared 
from the bark of a tree of the Papilionaceous order, Erythrophloewm guineense. 
This concoction, owing to the action of an alkaloid, erythrophlein, constitutes 
an irritant poison the strength of which varies greatly according to the amount 
of bark employed. It is usually prepared by the local medicine man, who con- 
sequently has it in his power so to vary its strength that it will act only as a vio- 
lent emetic or as a very potent and violent irritant poison. His personal opinion, 
or conviction as to the innocence or guilt of the accused person undoubtedly 
