He grew worse.
He made more ju-ju of greater power, but again in vain, and then he
made the greatest ju-ju man can make, and it availed nought, and he
knew he was dying; and so, with his remaining strength, he broke up
and dishonoured and destroyed all the Fetishes in which the spirits
lived, and cast them out into the surf and died like a man.
Then horror came upon the people when they knew he had done this,
and they burnt his house and all things belonging to him, and cried
upon the spirits not to forsake them, not to lay this one man's
deadly sin at their doors.
In connection with the gods of West Africa I may remark that in
almost all the series of native tradition there, you will find
accounts of a time when there was direct intercourse between the
gods or spirits that live in the sky, and men. That intercourse is
always said to have been cut off by some human error; for example,
the Fernando Po people say that once upon a time there was no
trouble or serious disturbance upon earth because there was a
ladder, made like the one you get palm-nuts with, "only long, long;"
and this ladder reached from earth to heaven so the gods could go up
and down it and attend personally to mundane affairs.
