INTO BUZIE COUNTRY l6l

forest stayed forest, it was hardly pitted at all by the
little holes the white prospectors had dug, the steep
paths to Zigita sparkled with mica, but the minerals
remained where they were in the soil of the country,
and the images had certainly not been pulled down
out of the temples.

That Zigita proved, the Buzie town reached by
forest paths so steep that I hardly had to bend to use
my hands in climbing. The President might speak
of building motor roads through the Republic: these
paths proved what difficulties lay before him. He had
forgotten or never trodden this way, as hard and
rough, according to Sir Alfred Sharpe, as any in
Africa, which leads to Zigita sprawling across a high
plateau, surrounded by forests and higher hills, five
and a half hours' trek from Nicoboozu. Zigita itself
is nearly two thousand feet up, and to the north-
west, Onagizi, a thimble of almost perpendicular
rock, rises another thousand feet, the home of evil
spirits. But all round Zigita are hills and forest;
it is overlooked from every side but one, and on
nights of storm the lightning runs along the top of
the hills, circling it with green flame.

The Big Bush Devil

In Zigita it is quite easy to believe that there are
men in Buzie country who can make lightning. The
use of lightning is little more than a post-graduate
course to be taken when the ordinary initiations of
the bush school are over, just as the women may take
poisoning as their post-graduate course. About six
years ago the old blind chief of Zigita lost his wife*.