In the valley of the Congo initiatory rites of this sort are common. In some places they are called Ndembo. “In the practice of Ndembo the initiating doctors get some one to fall down in a pretended fit, and in that state he is carried away to an enclosed place outside the town. This is called ‘dying Ndembo.’ Others follow suit, generally boys and girls, but often young men and women.... They are supposed to have died. But the parents and friends supply food, and after a period varying, according to custom, from three months to three years, it is arranged that the doctor shall bring them to life again.... When the doctor’s fee has been paid, and money (goods) saved for a feast, the _Ndembo_ people are brought to life. At first they pretend to know no one and nothing; they do not even know how to masticate food, and friends have to perform that office for them. They want everything nice that any one uninitiated may have, and beat them if it is not granted, or even strangle and kill people. They do not get into trouble for this, because it is thought that they do not know better. Sometimes they carry on the pretence of talking gibberish, and behaving as if they had returned from the spirit-world. After this they are known by another name, peculiar to those who have ‘died Ndembo.’ ... We hear of the custom far along on the upper river, as well as in the cataract region.”(904) The following account of the rites, as practised in this part of Africa, was given to Bastian by an interpreter. “In the land of Ambamba every one must die once, and when the fetish priest shakes his calabash against a village, all the men and lads whose hour is come fall into a state of lifeless torpidity, from which they generally awake after three days. But if the fetish loves a man he carries him away into the bush and buries him in the fetish house, often for many years. When he comes to life again, he begins to eat and drink as before, but his understanding is gone and the fetish man must teach him and direct him in every motion, like the smallest child. At first this can only be done with a stick, but gradually his senses return, so that it is possible to talk with him, and when his education is complete, the priest brings him back to his parents. They would seldom recognise their son but for the express assurances of the fetish priest, who moreover recalls previous events to their memory. He who has not gone through the ceremony of the new birth in Ambamba is universally looked down upon and is not admitted to the dances.” During the period of initiation the novice is sympathetically united to the fetish by which his life is henceforward determined.(905) The novice, plunged in the magic sleep or death-like trance within the sacred hut, “beholds a bird or other object with which his existence is thenceforward sympathetically bound up, just as the life of the young Indian is bound up with the animal which he sees in his dreams at puberty.”(906)