A third arrives and if that dies, the worm - the
father, I mean - turns, and if he is still desirous of more children,
he just breaks one of the legs of the body before throwing it in the
bush.
This he thinks will act as a warning to the wanderer-soul and give
it to understand that if it will persist in coming into his family,
it must settle down there and give up its flighty ways. If a fourth
child arrives in the family, "it usually limps," and if it dies, the
justly irritated parent cuts its body up carefully into very small
pieces, and scatters them, doing away with the soul altogether.
The Kama country people of the lower Ogowe are more superstitious
and full of observances than the upper river tribes.
Particularly rich in Fetish are the Ncomi, a Fernan Vaz tribe. I
once saw a funeral where they had been called in to do the honours,
and M. Jacot told me of an almost precisely similar occurrence that
he had met with in one of his many evangelising expeditions from
Lembarene.
