A Congo Custom — A Funeral — A Compliment to the Corpse — A Feast — A Public Speech —
Making a Hit, or Shooting a Fetish — Kaloolah's Conquest — A Musical Entertainment — The
Malaria — An Attack of Fever — Kaloolah as Nurse — Attentions of the Negroes — Return of
the Boniio — Danger from Kaloolah's Good Looks — Expedient to Get Rid of Her Beauty.
\T is the custom in Congo to suffer an interval of time to elapse
between the decease and burial of members of the higher
classes, proportioned to the rank of the subject and the wealth
of surviving friends. In the meantime the body is enveloped
in voluminous folds of cotton cloth, pieces of which are weekly and
almost daily added, so as to conceal any signs of decomposition. This
process goes on until the corpse attains an enormous size. When too
large for the house in which it is contained, the building is taken down and
a larger one erected in its place. In the case of very distinguished indi-
viduals, this is frequently done two or three times ; and a fellow who, in
his lifetime, never had clothing enough to cover his nakedness, is, after
death, swathed into a capital illustration of the principle of compensa-
tion — clothing himself then (or rather his friends doing so for him) in all
the cloth which he was formerly entitled to but did not have.
