Early the next morning, just before daybreak, the wailings and mournful songs of the natives rent the air. The whole village was in lamentation. Poor Mpomo had just died; he had gone to his long rest. He had died a poor heathen, believing in idols, witchcraft, fetiches, and in evil and good spirits. How mournful were their cries! "All is done with Mpomo! We shall never see him again! He will never speak to us any more! We shall not see him paddle his canoe any more! He will walk no more in the village!" At the last moment, when a Commi man is dying, his head wife comes and throws herself beside him on his bed, and surrounds his body with her arms, telling him that she loves him, and begging him not to die. As if the poor man wanted to die! I immediately went to Mpomo's hut. I saw his poor wives in tears sitting upon the ground, throwing moistened ashes and dust over their bodies, shaving their hair, and tearing the clothes they wore into rags. Now and then they took the lifeless body of poor Mpomo in their arms; at other times they would kneel at his motionless feet, and implore him to open his eyes and look at them. As soon as the news of Mpomo's death spread in the village, there was great excitement from one end of it to the other. Fear was on every face; each man and woman thought death was soon to overtake them. Each one dreaded his neighbor; fathers dreaded their sons and their wives; the sons their fathers and mothers; brothers and sisters were in fear of each other. A panic of the wildest kind had spread among the people of Goumbi; neither men nor women were in their senses. They fancied themselves surrounded by the shadow of death, and they saw it ready to get hold of them and carry them away to that last sleep of which they were so afraid. The people talked of nothing but witchcraft, of wizards, and witches. They were sure that Mpomo had been bewitched. Two days elapsed before Mpomo was buried, and then a large canoe came, and Mpomo's relatives took the body down the river, where the cemetery of the Abouya clan was situated. This cemetery was some fifty miles down the river, beyond Quayombi. As the body was placed in the canoe, the people of the whole village mourned. The shrieks of his wives were heart-rending, and it was, who should show the greatest sorrow among the people; for every one was afraid of being accused of aniemba (sorcery); for if they did not appear very sorry, they would be sure to be suspected of being aniembas (sorcerers). Immediately after the departure of the funeral procession, every man came out armed to the teeth, their faces betokening angry fear, all shouting and screaming, "There are people among us who kill other people. Let us find them out. Let us kill them. How is it--Mpomo was well a few days ago, and now Mpomo is dead?" A canoe was then immediately dispatched among the Bakalai in order to get a celebrated doctor, who had the reputation of being able to discover wizards at once.