NIAM-NIAM AUGURIES.
A Niam-niam could hardly be induced to go to war without first consulting the auguries, and his reliance upon their revelations is very complete. For instance, Wando, our inveterate antagonist, although he had succeeded in rousing two districts to open enmity against us, yet personally abstained from attacking our caravan, and that for no other reason than that his fowl had died after swallowing the “bengye” that had been administered. We awaited his threatened attack, and were full of surprise that he did not appear. Shortly afterwards, we were informed that he had withdrawn in fear and trembling to an inaccessible retreat in the wilderness. Our relief was considerable. It might have fared very badly with us, as all our magazines were established on his route; but, happily, he had gone, and the Niam-niam with whom we were brought in contact stoutly maintained that it was the death of his fowl alone which had deterred him from an assault and had rescued us from entire destruction.
These auguries are consulted likewise in order to ascertain the guilt or innocence of any that are accused, and suspected witches are tried by the same ordeal.
The same belief in evil spirits and goblins which prevails among the Bongo and other people of Central Africa is found here. The forest is uniformly supposed to be the abode of the hostile agencies, and the rustling of the foliage is imagined to be their mysterious dialogue. Superstition, like natural religion, is a child of the soil, and germinating like the flowers of the field it unfolds its inmost secrets. Beneath the dull leaden skies of the distant North there are believed to be structures haunted by ghosts and spectres. Here the forest, with its tenantry of owls and bats, is held to be the abode of malignant spirits; whilst betwixt both are the Oriental nations, who, without forests, and exposed to the full strength of a blazing sun, fear nothing so much as “the evil eye.” Truly it may be averred that the development of superstition is dependent upon geographical position.
In thus recapitulating the general characteristics of the Niam-niam, this chapter necessarily has exhibited some measure of repetition. I will proceed to conclude it, in the same manner as the record of the Bongo, by a few remarks upon the customs of this people with regard to their dead.
Whenever a Niam-niam has lost any very near relative the first token of his bereavement is shown by his shaving his head. His elaborate coiffure—that which had been his pride and his delight, the labour of devoted conjugal hands—is all ruthlessly destroyed, the tufts, the braids, the tresses being scattered far and wide about the roads in the recesses of the wilderness.
A corpse is ordinarily adorned, as if for a festival, with skins and feathers. It is usually dyed with red wood. Men of rank, after being attired with their common aprons, are interred either sitting on their benches, or are enclosed in a kind of coffin, which is made from a hollow tree.
According to the prescriptions of the law of Islam, the earth is not thrown upon the corpse, which is placed in a cavity that has been partitioned off at the side of the grave. This is a practice mentioned before, and which is followed in many heathen parts of Africa.
NIAM-NIAM GRAVES.
Like the Bongo, the Niam-niam bury their dead with a scrupulous regard to the points of the compass; but it is remarkable that they reverse the rule, the men in their sepulture being deposited with their faces towards the east, the women towards the west.