Recently (1901) a Mpongwe man had gone as a trader into the Batanga interior. He was sick at the time of his going, one of his legs being swollen with an edematous affection, so much so that people in the interior, natives of that part of the country, and fellow-traders, wondered that he should travel so far from his home in that condition. He said he was seeking among different tribes for the cure he had failed to obtain in his own tribe. Later on, he died. He happened to die alone, while others who lived with him, one of them a relative, were temporarily out of the house. The suddenness of the death aroused the superstitious beliefs of the relative, and he rushed to the conclusion that it had been caused by black art machinations of some enemy. But of the whereabouts or the personality of that enemy he had not even a suspicion. He cut from the dead man's body the first joints of his fingers and all the toe-nails, put them in the hollow of a horn, and closed its opening, intending to add its contents to his family Yâkâ when he should return to Gabun. Then he waved the horn to and fro toward the spirits of the air, held it above his head, and struck it on the back of his own neck, uttering at the same time an imprecation that as his relative had died, so might die that very day, even as he had died, the unknown enemy who had caused his death. There is another family "medicine," still used in some tribes, that was formerly held in reverence by the Banâkâ and Bapuku tribes of the Batanga country of the German Kamerun colony. It was called "Malanda." For description of it see Chapter XVI. Another medicine similar to the Yâkâ in its family interest is called by the Balimba people living north of Batanga, "Ekongi." The following statement is made to me by intelligent Batanga people who know the parties, and who believe that what they report actually occurred. At Balimba, in the German Kamerun territory, lived a man, by name Elesa. He possessed a little bundle containing powerful fetich medicines, so compounded that they constituted the kind of charm known as Ekongi. Like Aladdin's lamp, and almost as powerful, it warned him of danger, helped him in all his wishes, assisted him in his emergencies, and when he was away from it, as it was hidden in one of his chests in his house, caused him to be able to see and hear anything that was plotted against him. Only he could handle it aright; no one else would be able to manage it. A brother-in-law of Elesa, husband of his sister, knew of this Ekongi, and asked Elesa to loan it to him in order that he also might be successful in some of his projects. Now, the peculiarity of the Ekongi medicine is that it acts for and assists only the family of the person who owns it. Elesa refused his brother-in-law, telling him that as they did not belong to the same family, he would not know what to do with a strange Ekongi, nor would Ekongi be willing to answer a stranger.