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These poems are learnt by heart, for they have no writing; and on feast days the sons of chiefs sing them to the people, in the form of sacred chants. Their only musical instrument is a concave sonorous piece of wood which is beaten like a drum. Some specimens exist. It is the augurs, called bovites, who encourage these superstitions.
When the caciques wish to consult the zemes, concerning the result of a war, about the harvest, or their health, they enter the houses sacred to them and there absorb the intoxicating herb called kohobba, which is the same as that used by the bovites to excite their frenzy. Almost immediately they believe they see the room turn upside down, and men walking with their heads downwards.
Whenever the women succeed in obtaining the piece of meat which the bovites hold in their mouths, they wrap it with great respect in cloths and carefully preserve it, esteeming it to be a talisman of great efficacy in time of childbirth, and honouring it as though it were a zemes. The islanders pay homage to numerous zemes, each person having his own.
This has been possible because from the earliest times, and chiefly in the houses of the caciques; the bovites, that is to say the wise men, have trained the sons of the caciques, teaching them their past history by heart.
These men, who are persistent liars, act as doctors for the ignorant people, which gives them a great prestige, for it is believed that the zemes converse with them and reveal the future to them. If a sick man recovers the bovites persuade him that he owes his restoration to the intervention of the zemes. When they undertake to cure a chief, the bovites begin by fasting and taking a purge.
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