20_th_.—­Last night, after turning in, I heard a peculiar noise, as of some one in great distress, then loud speaking in a falsetto voice, and knew then what was up—­we had a spiritist in the village, and revelations were now about to be made.  We were all named, and the places we were to visit.  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.  He says, when we were at Eikiri, a few weeks ago, he knew it, and told the people of his village of it.

The wallaby-hunters are to come in this afternoon with great supplies.  When sitting round the fire with our old chief, we asked him if he knew of any tailed folks about inland.  “Oh dear, yes.”  And then he gave us a perfect and laughable description of what must be some creature of the monkey tribe.  It climbs, laughs, and talks a peculiar language of its own; it scratches the head, slaps the thigh, and sits down to eat like a man.  I then said, “But they are not really men?” “Well, not exactly, but very near it; they are hairy all over, and some are perfectly black.”  The tail, according to his description, must be about a fathom long.  We are to see them, and must, he says, secure one or two, dead or alive.  Our spirit is out in his prognostications, the wallaby-hunters have not returned, and we cannot leave to-morrow.

21_st_.—­Our spirit friend is quite out as yet, for here we are nursing Patience, and trying to make her a dear friend.  We are promised a start to-morrow.  In the evening, the hunters came in with large supplies of wallaby.  They report innumerable horses and foreigners as having gone to Kupele; we suppose it to be Goldie’s party.  From to-day’s shooting, the old man got a green parrot, and devoured it raw.  Oriope dressed himself in his fighting gear, and went through a few antics; he looked a perfect fiend.  He is very proud of a stone club he possesses with a piece broken off; he says it was broken in felling a tremendous fellow in a neighbouring village.  He killed him.  “What, stand before me!”