(M203) Among the Bondeis, a tribe on the coast of German East Africa, opposite to the island of Pemba, one of the rites of initiation into manhood consists in a pretence of slaying one of the lads with a sword; the entrails of a fowl are placed on the boy’s stomach to make the pretence seem more real.(656) Among the Bushongo, who inhabit a district of the Belgian Congo bounded on the north and east by the Sankuru River and on the west by the Kasai, young boys had formerly to undergo certain rites of initiation, amongst which a simulation of killing them would seem to have had a place, though in recent times the youths have been allowed to escape the ordeal by the payment of a fine. The supreme chief of the tribe, who in old days bore the title of God on Earth (_Chembe Kunji_), used to assemble all the lads who had just reached puberty and send them away into the forest, where they remained for several months under the care of one of his sons. During their seclusion they were deemed unclean and might see no one; if they chanced to meet a woman, she had to flee before them. By night the old men marched round the quarters of the novices, raising hideous cries and whirling bull-roarers, the noise of which the frightened lads took to be the voices of ghosts. They wore nothing but a comb, and passed their leisure hours in learning to make mats and baskets. After about a month they had to submit to the first ordeal. A trench about ten feet deep was dug in the ground and roofed over with sticks and earth so as to form a dark tunnel. In the sides of the tunnel were cut niches, and in each niche a man took post, whose business it was to terrify the novices. For this purpose one of them was disguised in the skin of a leopard, a second was dressed as a warrior with a knife in his hand, a third was a smith with his furnace and red-hot irons, and a fourth was masked to look like an ugly ape, while he too gripped a knife in his hand. The novices generally recoiled in dismay from each of these apparitions, and it was only by means of reiterated taunts and threats that the elders forced them to traverse the whole length of the tunnel. After the lapse of another month the youths had to face another ordeal of a similar character. A low tunnel, about three feet deep, was dug in the earth, and sticks were inserted in it so that their tops projected from the surface of the ground. At the end of the tunnel a calabash was set full of goat’s blood. By way of encouraging the timid novices the master of the ceremonies himself crawled through the tunnel, his progress under ground being revealed to the novices above ground by the vibrations of the sticks with which he collided in the dark passage. Then having bedabbled his nose, his mouth, and all the rest of his body with the goat’s blood, he emerged from the tunnel on hands and knees, dripping with gore and to all appearance in the last stage of exhaustion. Then he lay prostrate on