After Talking So Much About The Secret Society Spirits, It May Be As
Well To Say What They Are.
They are, one and all, a kind of a sort
of a something that usually (the exception is Ikun) lives in the
bush.
Last February I was making my way back toward Duke Town -
late, as usual; I was just by a town on the Qwa River. As I was
hurrying onward I heard a terrific uproar accompanied by drums in
the thick bush into which, after a brief interval of open ground,
the path turned. I became cautious and alarmed, and hid in some
dense bush as the men making the noise approached. I saw it was
some ju-ju affair. They had a sort of box which they carried on
poles, and their dresses were peculiar, and abnormally ample over
the upper part of their body. They were prancing about in an
ecstatic way round the box, which had one end open, beating their
drums and shouting. They were fairly close to me, but fortunately
turned their attention to another bit of undergrowth, or that
evening they would have landed another kind of thing to what they
were after. The bushes they selected they surrounded and evidently
did their best to induce something to come out of them and go into
their box arrangement. I was every bit as anxious as they were that
they should succeed, and succeed rapidly, for you know there are a
nasty lot of snakes and things in general, not to mention driver
ants, about that Calabar bush, that do not make it at all pleasant
to go sitting about in.
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