MISTAKES AND FALSE NEWS 375 of the great prophet Nabi Mussa, or Moses. It will be best to give your charity to children. Then all the grisgris of the negroes and the marabouts will avail nothing against you. But beware, above all, on account of your men. If you cut away all the roots of a tree it falls. In the same way, if they take away your negroes, all will be over with you. Now I have come to give you a grisgris for them, which will protect them from all spells, and even from corth and other evils. I can even give you a corti myself, which will kill a man if you only throw the tiniest bit of it in his face."

The corU is, in fact, the most terrible of all spells amongst the negroes. It is said to consist of a powder which slays from a distance. The natives say that if thrown from some miles off the man it touches dies, and the truth seems to be, that the sorcerers have the secret of a very subtle poison, which produces terrible disorders in those touched by it.

As a matter of course, we did not accept the offers of a corti or counter cort from Djula, but to give him an idea of the mischief we could do if we chose, I gave him a five-franc piece in a bowl of galvanized water, as I had the son of the chief of the Kel Temulai. I then told him to go to Mossi and have a look round there to see what would happen. He is a crazy old fellow enough, but I have been told that sorcerers have more influence over the Mossi and their nabas as they call their chiefs, than those who are in the full possession of their senses. He was willing to go, and when the Tabaski was over he would come back inch Allah with envoys from Bilinga or Wagadugu.

Now Bilinga is eleven days' march from" Say, and eight days after he left us the old fellow came back pretending he had gone all the way. He had really never gone