I should have mentioned that before leaving my black people I had provided myself with what I may term a native passport--a kind of Masonic mystic stick, inscribed with certain cabalistic characters.

Every chief carried one of these sticks.

I carried mine in my long, luxuriant hair, which I wore "bun" fashion, held in a net of opossum hair.

This passport stick proved invaluable as a means of putting us on good terms with the different tribes we encountered.

The chiefs of the blacks never ventured out of their own country without one of these mysterious sticks, neither did the native message-bearers.