WESTERN LIBERIA 101

in his village than the chief, and the mask may con-
tinue to be reverenced, even when discarded, and fed
by its owner like a fetish.

Mark, when I knew him better, told me a little of
his own experience. As a Christian boy he spent only
a fortnight in the bush, and all he did, he said, was to
sit and eat rice. He was in the mission school one
day when the devil, this same Landow, came for him.
There had been no warning. His teacher told him
not to be afraid, but the devil, through his ijiterpreter
(for the devil does not speak a language the native
can understand), said, "I'm going to swallow you."
He was not allowed to go home first; he was bound
hand and foot and his eyes were bandaged and he was
carried into the bush. He was very scared. Then
they flung him on the ground and cut him with a
razor, but he said it didn't hurt much. They made
two little ridges on his neck, two under the armpit,
two on the belly. I asked him if he was beaten, for
Dr. Westermann, writing of the Pelle tribe in Liberia,
has described a kind of Spartan training. He said he
was beaten once: one day the devil told the boys they
were not to go outside their huts all day whatever
they heard; of course they disobeyed and were beaten.
At the end of a fortnight he was dressed in white
clothes and taken back to the village in the dark. He
admitted at last rather reluctantly that the devil, who
didn't wear bis mask in the school, was the black-
smith at Mosambolahun: so perhaps they were
wise to teach him nothing, but just to let him sit and
eat rice for a fortnight. In any case they are easy-
going, lazy, not very religious in Bande country. It
was to be different among the Buzies.