Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/539

 "They be fool men," said he, and he went on to explain that the ghost of that slave would be almost immediately back on earth again growing up ready to work for some one else, and would not wait for its last owner's soul down below, and out of the luxuriant jungle of information that followed I gathered that no man's soul dallies below long, and also that a soul returning to a family, a thing ensured by certain ju-jus, was identified. The new babies as they arrive in the family are shown a selection of small articles belonging to deceased members whose souls are still absent; the thing the child catches hold of identifies him. "Why he's Uncle John, see! he knows his own pipe;" or "That's cousin Emma, see! she knows her market calabash," and so on.

I remember discoursing with a very charming French official on the difficulty of eradicating fetish customs.

"Why not take the native in the rear, Mademoiselle," said he, "and convert the native gods?"

I explained that his ingenious plan was not feasible, because you cannot convert gods. Even educating gods is hopeless work. All races of men, through countless ages, have been attempting to make their peculiar deities understand how they are wanted to work, and what they are wanted to do, and the result is anything but encouraging.

As I have dwelt on the repellent view of Negro funeral custom, I must in justice to them cite their better view. There is a custom that I missed much on going south of Calabar, for it is a pretty one. Outside the villages in the Calabar districts, by the sides most frequented roads, you will see erections of boughs. I do not think these are intended for huts, but for beds, for they are very like the Calabar type of bed, only made in wood instead of clay. Over them a roof of mats is put, to furnish a protection against rain.

These shelters—graves or fetish huts they are wrongly called by Europeans are made by driving four longish stout poles into the ground while at the height of about three feet or so four more poles are tied so as to make a skeleton platform which is filled in with withies and made flat. Another set of five poles is tied above, and to these the roof is affixed. On