Note 198.2 — Chapter X · WITCHCRAFT: PHILTRES—PREVENTIVE AND REMEDIAL LEECHCRAFT.

But the custom is not confined in Africa any more than in Asia to Mohammedan districts. The Shilluk on the White Nile derive their origin from an ancestor whom they call Niekam; and from his sacred tree they suspend glass beads and pieces of stuff.198.2 On the western side of the continent, Mungo Park found a tree in the kingdom of Woolli decorated with innumerable rags or scraps of cloth tied upon its branches at different times by travellers. He conjectures that it was at first intended as an indication that water was to be found not far off; but of this there is no evidence. The custom was, as he says, so greatly sanctioned by time that nobody presumed to pass without hanging up something; and the intrepid explorer himself followed the example. A pool was, in fact, found not far off, as his Negroes predicted.199.1 A French traveller in the region of the Congo relates with astonishment concerning the n’doké—which he portrays as “fetishes important enough to occupy a special hut, and confided to the care of a sort of priests, who alone are reputed to have the means of making them speak”—that when it is desired to invoke the fetish, one or more pieces of native cloth, and the like, are offered to it or to the fetish-priest; and the worshipper is then admitted to plant a nail in the statue, the priest meanwhile, or the worshipper himself, formulating his prayer or his desires.199.2 Another French traveller in the watershed of the upper Niger reports the custom of sacrificing animals under sacred trees. The animal when slain is eaten; its head is placed under the tree, or suspended from one of the branches, or laid in a fork. Pottery of various kinds, handles of old agricultural implements, old clothes and calabashes, cow-tails, and so forth, lie around the fetish-tree; and under one such tree he saw a piece of hollow wood propped on forks and filled with grass and other plants.200.1