204 RELIGIOUS FEELING 



liveliest astonishment. . . . He ridiculed the notion of any- 

 one worshipping a thing he had made with his own hands.' 

 But, on the other hand, * a printed book was regarded as the 

 white man's charm.' l Dr. Moffatt's distinguished son-in-law, 

 Dr. Livingstone, thus refers to the Makonde natives of the 

 Eovuma district: * They know nothing of a deity ; they pray 

 to their mothers when in distress ; they know nothing of a 

 future state, nor have they any religion except a belief in 

 medicine. . . . They blame witches for disease and death. 

 . . . They fear the English.' The Rev. Dr. Nixon, Bishop 

 of Tasmania, was ' obliged to desist from all attempts at 

 conversion, because the poverty of their language and 

 conceptions rendered every higher religious idea impos- 

 sible to them' the aborigines of Tasmania. Dr. George 

 Smith, formerly editor of the * Friend of India,' endeavouring 

 to claim for the Andaman Islanders ' a capacity for being 

 influenced by Christian teaching,' is forced, with obvious 

 unwillingness, to admit that such a capacity 'has been so 

 lamentably wanting in the Nicobarese to the south, whom 

 .... the Jesuits and Moravians successively attempted to 

 influence in vain.' Regarding certain savage tribes of the 

 Albert Nyanza region of Central Africa, Baker reports that 

 the ' head of the Austrian mission acknowledged .... that 

 the mission was absolutely useless among such savages .... 

 that the natives were utterly impracticable ' as to religious 

 impressions of any kind. Baker himself found that ' the 

 obtuseness of the savages was such that I never could make 

 them understand the existence of good principle. Their one 

 idea was power force that could obtain all, the strong hand 

 that could wrest from the weak.' 



These experiences and opinions of missionaries are abun- 

 dantly confirmed by the concurrent evidence of travellers, 

 naturalists, sportsmen, and merchants, all intimately ac- 

 quainted with the habits both of thought and action of the 

 savage races among whom they dwelt, or with whom they 

 became for the time associated. Of the natives of Dahomey 

 Lieutenant Ellis thus expresses himself in one of the leading 

 religious publications of this country : They ' have no idea 



1 'Dailv News,' December 1, 1875. 



