I. Queen Ngwe-nkonde and her Manja 332 II. The Beautiful Daughter 337 III. The Husband that Came from an Animal 346 IV. The Fairy Wife 351 V. The Thieves and their Enchanted House 358 VI. Banga-of-the-five-faces 367 VII. The Two Brothers 372 VIII. Jěki and his Ozâzi 378 GLOSSARY 387 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Fetich Magician _Frontispiece_ Facing Page Native King in the Niger Delta 16 English Trading-House--Gabun 24 Fetich Doctor 86 Elephants' Tusks and Palm-leaf Thatch. Two Hundred Miles up the Ogowe River 148 War Canoe.--Calabar, West Africa 174 Natives Trading in Plantains and Bamboo Building Materials.--Gabun 182 Travelling by Canoe.--Ogowe River 198 A Civilized Family.--Gabun 236 Njěmbě. Female Secret Society.--Mpongwe, Gabun 254 Ekope of the Ivanga Dance.--Gabun 296 A Street in Libreville, Gabun 300 Map of the West African Coast 1 FETICHISM IN WEST AFRICA CHAPTER I CONSTITUTION OF NATIVE AFRICAN SOCIETY--SOCIOLOGY That stream of the Negro race which is known ethnologically as "Bantu," occupies all of the southern portion of the African continent below the fourth degree of north latitude. It is divided into a multitude of tribes, each with its own peculiar dialect. All these dialects are cognate in their grammar. Some of them vary only slightly in their vocabulary. In others the vocabulary is so distinctly different that it is not understood by tribes only one hundred miles apart, while that of others a thousand miles away may be intelligible.