I felt somewhat anxious as to the revelation, for if it should be
the least doubtful as to our going, no native would stir with us.
However, the revelation, on being interpreted to us by Kena, was all
right; we were good men, and kind, and the villages would all willingly
receive us. The spirit dilated at length on the good qualities of
foreign tobacco and the badness of the native stuff, and wound up by
asking for some foreign. Oriope at once got up and gave from his own
stock what was wanted. These native spiritists are terrible nuisances;
they get whatever they ask, and the natives believing so thoroughly in
them, they have the power of upsetting all arrangements and causing
serious trouble. This morning, I found our spirit friend to be a man who
sat in our house all day yesterday, a stranger from an inland village. He
has quite a different look from the other natives--an anxious, melancholy
expression. While at morning coffee, he came and sat down alongside of
us all right, and we learned from him that the spirit of a deceased
friend comes into him, and then things are revealed, the spirit speaking
through him.
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