He then gave the oracular response that the child was being killed by the spirit of a Portuguese trader who once lived at Cassange.
The case was this: on the death of the trader, the other Portuguese merchants in the village came together, and sold the goods of the departed to each other, each man accounting for the portion received to the creditors of the deceased at Loanda.

The natives, looking on, and not understanding the nature of written mercantile transactions, concluded that the merchants of Cassange had simply stolen the dead man's goods, and that now the spirit was killing the child of Captain Neves for the part he had taken in the affair.

The diviner, in his response, revealed the impression made on his own mind by the sale, and likewise the native ideas of departed souls.

As they give the whites credit for greater stupidity than themselves in all these matters, the mother of the child came, and told the father that he ought to give a slave to the diviner as a fee to make a sacrifice to appease the spirit and save the life of the child.

The father quietly sent for a neighbor, and, though the diviner pretended to remain in his state of ecstasy, the brisk application of two sticks to his back suddenly reduced him to his senses and a most undignified flight.
The mother of this child seemed to have no confidence in European wisdom, and, though I desired her to keep the child out of currents of wind, she preferred to follow her own custom, and even got it cupped on the cheeks.