Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/182

168 and dying from starvation. This last was apparently the latest sacrifice of the priest, and presumably intended as representing the defeat of the white man. Further on there are two more screens similar to the first, and inside the second one is a small island, on which there is an altar with about fifty guns stuck in it, and decorated with skulls and the usual "ju-ju" horrors. About fifteen yards from the last screen the ravine ends abruptly, and here water bubbles out from a spring which feeds the stream. Over the place where the water comes out is a large roof made of human skulls, with which trophy nearly everything in the ravine is adorned. Under the roof and almost touching the water hangs a large curtain of grass and cloths, but there is nothing behind it. One of the skulls is fairly fresh—being the head of a victim sacrificed two months ago—and naturally it smells horribly. In the water are a lot of large grey tame fish with big yellow eyes, which come up and smell your feet and legs. The main wealth of the Aro nation is derived from slaves, and the "long ju-ju" is used as a bait to entrap confiding and superstitious natives. People come from all parts to consult the "ju-ju," and most of them never get further than the small cleared place in front of the first screen, as they are seized and smuggled away, being afterwards sold into slavery. If at any time an unusually large number of people come to consult the oracle, one or two are sacrificed as a thank-offering, but in a thriving commercial community like the Omo-chuku it is wasting money to kill a slave. The slaves are divided among the fourteen elders of the Aro nation, each elder receiving a certain proportion, and any slaves over and above are sacrificed. The outside world is made to believe that everyone taken to consult the 'ju-ju' is eaten up by it."

Reuter's correspondent accompanies his plan (Plate II.) with the following description (Daily Graphic, 24th January, 1902):—

"The approach to the Long Ju-ju is through dense bush, which gradually becomes thicker and thicker until one arrives at the entrance of a deep oval-shaped pit, seventy feet deep, sixty yards long, and fifty yards wide. One then climbs down the precipitous sides of the rock into a narrow gorge and into running water, up which one wades, passing under two fences, until one