"'Weak man,' he cried, as he passed. 'Thou fearest to obey. Follow me.' "An instant later the great crocodile had crawled over the edge of the precipice, and a moment afterwards Gogo had followed his example. It seemed as if he were in the air an hour, but suddenly his horse's hoofs touched earth again; the animal never fell into the terrible abyss, but merely tore up a piece of the turf where he had stood. He looked around; Zomara had disappeared, but in the hole that the horse's hoof had caused he saw a large ring of iron. Dismounting, he tried to raise it, but only after two hours' work he succeeded in moving it and excavating from its hiding-place an enormous chest filled with gold pieces and costly jewels, and so he lived in affluence the remainder of his life, till Zomara took him to be one of his councillors. So are the righteous rewarded." Then some thick-lipped musicians struck up music on quaintly-shaped stringed instruments, and the strange old man, bearing a kind of tambourine in his hand, came round to collect coins, the collection being repeated at the conclusion of each legend. In one of his stories mention was made in the most matter-of-fact manner of a sick person being buried alive. This caused me to address some questions to Liola, who, seated near me, told me that this terrible custom was one recently introduced by the Naya. "The ghastly practice is supposed to appease Zomara and give us victory over our enemies," she said. "As soon as any serious illness setteth in, the patient is taken from his house wrapped in his best robes, deposited in a grave and then covered with earth. No one in Mo now dieth a natural death. When the body hath been placed in the grave, the friends of the dead man set forth to kill the first living creature they can encounter, man, woman or beast, believing that through their victim their friend hath been compelled to die. When thus in search of an expiatory victim, they take the precaution of breaking off young shoots of the shrubs as they pass by, leaving the broken ends hanging in the direction they are going as a warning to people to shun that path. Even should one of their own relatives be the first to meet the avengers they dare not suffer him to escape." "Life is not very secure in Mo when sickness rageth," I observed.