Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/263

 colour white, but chalk white. There is another important point here, but it wants a volume to itself, so I must pass it. Mbuiri's appearance in a corporeal form denotes ill luck, not death to the seer, but misfortune of a severe and diffused character. The ruin of a trading enterprise, the destruction of a village or a family, are put down to Mbuiri's action. Yet he is not regarded as a malevolent god, a devil, but as an avenger, or punisher of sin; and the M'pongwe look on him as the Being to whom they primarily owe the good things and fortunes of this life, and as the Being who alone has power to govern the host of truly malevolent spirits that exist in nature.

The different instruments with which he works in the shaping of human destiny bear his name when in his employ. When acting by means of water, he is Mbuiri Aningo; when in the weather, Mbuiri Ngali; when in the forests, Mbuiri Ibaka; when in the form of a dwarf, Mbuiri Akkoa, and so on.

The great difference between Mbuiri and the lesser spirits is this:—the lesser spirits cannot incarnate themselves except through extraneous things; Mbuiri can, he can become visible without anything beyond his own will to do so. The other spirits must be in something to become visible. This is an extremely delicate piece of fetish which it took me weeks to work out. I think I may say another thing about Mbuiri, though I say it carefully, and that is, that among the M'pongwe and the tribe who are the parent tribe of the M'pongwe—the now rapidly dying out Ajumba, and their allied tribe the Igalwa—Mbuiri is a distinct entity, while among the neighbouring tribes he is a class, i.e. there are hundreds of Mbuiri or Ombwiri, one for every remarkable place or thing, such as rock, tree, or forest thicket, and for every dangerous place in a river. Had I not observed a similar state of affairs regarding Sasabonsum, a totally different kind of spirit on the Windward coast, I should have had even greater trouble than I had, in finding a key to what seemed at first a mass of conflicting details regarding this important spirit Mbuiri.

There is one other very important point in M'pongwe fetish;