"Mengo," Grigris (which old travellers call "gregories"), or
talismans, chiefly leopards' teeth, rude bells, and horns. The
Monda are hunting prophylacteries, antelope horns filled with
"fetish" medicines, leopard's hair, burnt and powdered heart
mixed with leaves, and filth; the mouths are stopped with some
viscid black stuff, probably gum. They are often attached to rude
bells of iron or brass (Igelenga, Ngenge, Nkendo, or Wonga), like
the Chingufu of the Congo regions and the metal cones which are
struck for signals upon the Tanganyika Lake.

A great man is known by his making himself a marvellous "guy,"
wearing, for instance, a dingily laced cocked hat, stuck athwart-
ships upon an unwashed night-cap, and a naval or military
uniform, fifty years old, "swearing" with the loin-cloth and the
feet, which are always bare.

The coiffure of the is peculiar and
elaborate as that of the Gold Coast. These ladies seem to have
chosen for their model the touraco or cockatoo,--they have never
heard of "Kikeriki,"--and the effect is at first wondrously
grotesque. Presently the eye learns to admire pretty Fanny's
ways; perhaps the pleureuse, the old English corkscrew ringlet,
might strike the stranger as equally natural in a spaniel, and
unnatural in a human. Still a style so peculiar requires a
toilette in keeping; the "king" in uniform is less ridiculous
than the Gaboon lady's chignon, contrasting with a tight-bodied
and narrow-skirted gown of pink calico.

The national "tire-valiant" is a galeated crest not unlike the
cuirassier's helmet, and the hair, trained from the sides into a