98 JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS

The local "devil", Landow from Mosambolahun had
entered the village for the funeral, and it was really
to see him dance that I was there. I had caught one
glimpse of him at dusk in Bolahun striding by in his
long raffia skirts and his wooden snouted mask. From
each village on the way he collected irons, for on
entering Tailahun he must pay the new chief a
tribute of several bundles.

The new chief dozed in his hammock in the tiny
palaver-house. I dashed him two shillings; it was the
heat of the day, and he was bored and embarrassed
by the visit. Two chairs were fetched for us, and
about thirty people crowded into the cramped hut;
the insects were hopping on the floor. Presently two
men with long drums arrived; dangling below each
drum a metal disc. They wore red caps with gold stars
on them and a long tassel very like the caps of the
Frontier Force I had seen at Foya. They stamped
their bare feet among the jiggers and tapped their
drums and metal discs with little curved hammers.
More musicians slowly gathered in the cramped hot
hut at the sound, of the drums. Three women came
with varying sizes of rattles—gourds containing grains
of rice which they shook in nets, and a man with a
harp of five strings made of palm fibre, attached to
half a gourd which he pressed to his breast (the faint
sweet twanging could only be heard when the drums
and rattles were still). Last came a man with an
ordinary big drum, which did give a kind of sexual
urgency to a music hard for a European to under-
stand. The music was continually mounting to a
climax as the drummers beat their feet and sweated
«and the women rattled and swayed, but nothing ever