to Europeans, came from the West, and Andrew Battel (1600) found idols amongst the people whom he calls Giagas or Jagas, meaning Congoese chiefs.  Moreover, the Gaboon pagans lodge their idols.  Behind each larger establishment there is a dwarf hut, the miniature of a dwelling-place, carefully closed; I thought these were offices, but Hotaloya Andrews taught me otherwise.  He called them in his broken English “Compass-houses,” a literal translation of “Nago Mbwiri,” and, sturdily refusing me admittance, left me as wise as before.  The reason afterwards proved to be that “Ologo he kill man too much.”

I presently found out that he called my pocket compass, “Mbwiri,” a very vague and comprehensive word.  It represents in the highest signification the Columbian Manitou, and thus men talk of the Mbwiri of a tree or a river; as will presently be seen, it is also applied to a tutelar god; and I have shown how it means a ghost.  In “Nago Mbwiri” the sense is an idol, an object of worship, a “medicine” as the North-American Indians say, in contradistinction to Munda, a grigri, talisman, or charm.  Every Mpongwe, woman as well as man, has some Mbwiri to which offerings are made in times of misfortune, sickness, or danger.  I afterwards managed to enter one of these rude and embryonal temples so carefully shut.  Behind the little door of matting is a tall threshold of board; a bench lines the far end, and in the centre stands “Ologo,” a rude imitation of a human figure, with a gum-torch planted in the ground before it ready for burnt offerings.  To the walls are suspended sundry mystic implements, especially basins, smeared with red and white chalk-mixture, and wooden crescents decorated with beads and ribbons.

During worship certain objects are placed before the Joss, the suppliant at the same time jangling and shaking the Ncheke a rude beginning of the bell, the gong, the rattle, and the instruments played before idols by more advanced peoples.  It is a piece of wood, hour-glass-shaped but flat, and some six inches and a half long; the girth of the waist is five inches, and about three more round the ends.  The wood is cut away, leaving rude and uneven raised bands horizontally striped with white, black, and red.  Two brass wires are stretched across the upper and lower breadth, and each is provided with a ring or hinge holding four or five strips of wire acting as clappers.

This “wicker-work rattle to drive the devil out” (M. du Chaillu, chap, xxvi.) is called by the Mpongwe “Soke,” and serves only, like that of the Dahomans and the Ashantis (Bowdich, 364) for dancing and merriment.  The South American Maraca was the sole object of worship known to the Tupi or Brazilian “Indians.” [FN#13]