same class. This does not altogether limit you as a successor to a certain line of practice, but, as no one spirit can do all things, it tends to make you a specialist. I know a district where, if any one wanted a canoe charm, they went to one medical man; if a charm to keep thieves off their plantation, to another.
This brings us to the practice itself, and it may be divided into two divisions. First, prophylactic methods, namely, making charms to protect your patient's wives, children, goats, plantations, canoes, &c. from damage, houses from fire, &c., &c., and to protect the patient himself from wild animals and all danger by land or water. This is a very paying part, but full of anxiety. For example, put yourself in the place of a Mpangwe medical friend of mine. You have with much trouble got a really valuable spirit to come into a paste made of blood and divers things, and having made it into a sausage form, and done it round with fibre wonderfully neatly, you have painted it red outside to please the spirits—because spirits like red, they think it's blood. Well, in a week or so the man you administered it to comes back and says "that thing's no good." His paddle has broken more often than before he had the thing. The amount of rocks, and floating trees, to say nothing of snags, is, he should say, about double the normal, whereby he has lost a whole canoe load of European goods, and, in short, he doesn't think much of you as a charm maker. Then he expectorates and sulks offensively. You take the charm, and tell him it was a perfectly good one when you gave it him, and you never had any complaints before, but you will see what has gone wrong with it. Investigation shows you that the spirit is either dead or absent. In the first case it has been killed by a stronger spirit of its own class; in
