Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/556

 Apollonia he only sucks their blood. Natives of this district after meeting him have crawled home and given an account of his appearance, and then expired.

Ellis says he is believed to be implacable, and when angered can never be mollified or propitiated, but it is certain that human victims are constantly sacrificed to him in districts beyond white control; in districts under it, the equivalent value of a human sacrifice in sheep and goats is offered to him. In Ashantee he has priests, and of course human sacrifice. Away among the Dahomeyan tribes—where he has kept his habits but got another name, and seems to have crystallised from a class into an individual—the usual way in which a god develops—he has priests and priestesses, and they are holy terrors; but among the Tschwi, Sasabonsum is mainly dealt with by witches, and people desirous of possessing the power of becoming witches. They derive their power from him in a remarkable way. I put myself to great personal inconvenience (fever risk, mosquito certainty, high leopard and snake palaver probability, and grave personal alarm and apprehension) to verify Colonel Ellis's account of the methods witches employ in this case, and finding his account correct I quote it, because it is more concise than mine is likely to be.

Ellis says, "A person who wishes to obtain a suhman (tutelary deity) proceeds to the dark and gloomy recesses of the forest, wherein, among the Bombaces a local Sasabonsum resides. There, having first poured a small quantity of rum upon the earth as a propitiatory offering, he adopts one of the following courses.

"1. He cuts from a tree a moderately thick branch which he carves into a rude resemblance of the human figure; usually these figures are simply cylindrical pieces of wood, from ten to fourteen inches in length and from three to four in diameter. Two or three inches from one end, which may be called the top, the stick is notched so as to roughly resemble a neck, and the top is then rounded to bear some rough distant resemblance to a head.

"2. He takes the root of a plant or bush growing there, scrapes it, and grinds it into a paste with the blood of a fowl.

"3. He takes some red earth from the spot and mixes it