While on this subject of appeasing water-spirits I may relate a very amusing incident that came to my knowledge, the chief actor in which was well known to me. The folk in the Bombilinga district had been very unsuccessful in their fishing, and putting the cause of their non-success down to the wrath of the water-spirits who had turned aside the fish from their traps and nets, they desired to conciliate them. With this object they decided to buy a man and throw him into the river. They bought a man with one eye, who, on account of that deformity, was sold cheap, and, tying him, as they thought, securely, they hurled him from a canoe into the river. By some means, however, he got loose and swam ashore, and on his landing the surprised people asked him why he had returned after being sacrificed to the water-spirits. His smart reply was: “The water-spirits did not want any one-eyed folk down there, so they loosened the ropes and sent me ashore.” By his wit he saved his life, but another and more perfectly formed person was bought and thrown into the river in his stead. This happened some years before we went to live in the district, but the one-eyed man I knew very well, and more than one person told me of the incident. Up to the early months of 1890 eight brothers lived at Bonjoko—a town three miles below Monsembe. For some unknown reason their slaves beat to death the chief of that town. Now slave-owners were held responsible for the actions of their slaves, so the brothers had to flee for their lives; but one of them was killed before he could escape, and the others came to Monsembe and built a set of houses with a strong palisade round them. They lived thus for nine months in apparent security. A chief, however, is worth two ordinary men, and the family of the murdered head-man did not forget that one more life was owing to them, but they waited their time and opportunity. Some nine months afterwards a Monsembe slave fell from a palm tree and was picked up dead. All that day and the next the other slaves of the town danced and sang at the funeral festivities of the dead man, and during the noise of their crying and chanting dirges some Bonjoko people entered the town, rushed into the stockade, and, killing one of the brothers there, they cut open the head of another, and chased a third one into the bush, where they speared him to death.