An instance of the usefulness of Nkimba is supplied in the story of the founding of our Bayneston Station. It was decided that a promontory, jutting into the river near Vunda, would be a most advantageous site for a base of water transport on the piece of river, still used by Mr. Stanley, and lying between Isangila and Manyanga. We were then using the wild river there because the road by land was blocked.
We had carried overland for fifty miles our steel sectional boat, the Plymouth. Landing on the promontory, Messrs. Comber and Hartland pitched their tents for the night, sending a message to the towns on the hills by a fisherman that they would like to see the chiefs in the morning. Up to eleven o’clock no one appeared, and they determined to go themselves. As they neared the towns all was in the wildest excitement; no white man had ever been there before. The women had been sent into the woods, and the men advanced in the grass with their guns to fight the intruders. The missionaries had with them a headman who was a Nkimba, and seeing the dangerous state of affairs, he rushed forward uttering the Nkimba trill; this was replied to, and all was quiet. The missionaries were received by some of the principal men, who agreed to let them have the headland, and, a fortnight later, they signed the contract, selling the land to us, in consideration of a fitting present. Although some of our best scholars are called away sometimes to be initiated into Nkimba, we do not regard it as an unmixed evil.
The natives of the Congo basin are not idolators, and as they know of no means of communicating with Nzambi (God), they betake themselves to charms. A Congo boy grows up, and sees every one with his charms. One man boasts that he has a charm that will make him rich, and he ties to it a little strip of every piece of cloth he buys; others have charms to keep away witches, against theft or sickness, to stop or to bring rain—charms which enable them to cure sicknesses, or to perform the office of witch-doctor, of Nganga-a-moko, or to discover theft. From very babyhood a child hears the word Nkixi (a charm, x = sh) frequently uttered; no wonder,