TRANSACTIONS OP THE SECTIONS. 191 



ject. A universal belief existed in good and e^-il spirits, and in the power of chamis^ 

 called Monda, made with a variety of objects. They also believed in the power of 

 witchcraft and the significance of cbeanis. He had come to the determined con- 

 viction that, though these people lay offerings upon the gi-aves of their friends, 

 though they even sometimes shed the blood of slaves on the gi-ave of a chief or 

 that of a father of a family, though they fear the spirit of the recent dead, they 

 have no definite idea as to the state of the soid after death. It is true they fear 

 the spirit or ghost of the recently departed, and place fm-niture, dress, and food on 

 their graves, and return fi'om time to time with fresh supplies of food. The spirits 

 of the -victims slain at the graves, whether women or men, it is believed join that 

 of him who has departed. During the season appointed for mourniug, the deceased 

 is remembered and feared ; but when once his memory grows dim, fear gradually 

 lessens, presents of food over the grave become more and more scarce, and the gene- 

 ration that comes afterwards, and who never saw the man, abstain from giving any 

 present whatever, and take no concern about such spirit. The burial-gi-ound exists 

 only among a very few tribes ; but among many, as soon as a person has died, the 

 corpse is left imder a tree, and the village is removed to a far distance. Ask the 

 negro where is the spirit of his great grandfather : he says he does not know ; it is 



fone. Ask him about the spirit of his father or brother, who died yesterday ; then 

 e is fidl of fear and ten-or ; he believes it to be generally near the place where the 

 body has been bm-ied. There is, as he had mentioned above, a total lack of gene- 

 ralization. Thus some M-ill believe that a certain man's soul, after he died, went 

 into the body of a bird, beast, or gorilla ; but ask them concerning the transmigTa- 

 tion of soids in general, they wiU say they know nothing. They fear the spirit of 

 the recently departed ; they think of it as a vindictive thing which must be con- 

 ciliated. All the tribes he had visited had faith in the power of existing spirits, 

 generally called Obambou, or Oconcou, and the other Mbuiri ; they have other names 

 in various tribes which come near to these names ; both appear to have power to 

 do good or evil. They are not represented by idol'?, but m many villages have 

 houses built for their occupation when tired of wandering, and food is offered to 

 them. In some tribes they are believed to be married to two female spirits ; they 

 ai-e said sometimes to walk in the street of the village and to speak to those they 

 meet. They believe in idols, and each clan and head of a family possesses one. 

 These idols are believed to have the power to keep the clan out of evU., and to be 

 able to foretell events. The people, the author continued, are totally ignorant of God 

 or a Supreme Beuig. Witchcraft was believed in ; polygamy was very prevalent ; 

 and slavery an institution of the land. Slaves were the money of the country, the 

 standard of valuation. Many of these Afi-ican tribes are fast disappearing j their 

 languages or dialects will disappear with them. 



On the Antiquity of Man, from tlie Evidence of Language, 

 By John Ckawftjrd, F.R.S, 



The periods usually assigned for man's first appearance on earth necessarily 

 dates only from the time when he had already attained such an amount of civili- 

 zation as to enable him to frame some kind of record of his own career, and take 

 no account of the many ages which must have passed away before he could 

 have attained that power. Among the many facts which attested the high anti- 

 quity of man was the fonnation of language. Language was not innate, but 

 adventitious — a mere acquirement, having its origin in the superiority of the 

 human understanding. The prodigious nmuber of languages which existed was 

 one proof that language was not innate, — some with a veiy narrow range of articu- 

 late sounds, others with a very wide one ; some confined to single syllables, while 

 others had many ; some being very simple and others of a veiy complex stnictm-e, 

 thus implying that each tongue was a separate and distinct creation, or that each 

 horde fomied its own independent tongue. A whole nation might lose its original 

 tongue, and in its stead adopt any foreign one. The language which was the ver- 

 nacular one of the Jews 3000 years ago had ceased to be so above 2000 years ago, 

 and the descendants of those who spoke it were now speaking an infinity of foreign 

 tongaies — sometimes European and sometimes Asiatic. Languages derived from 

 a single tongue of Italy had superseded the ninny native languages which were 



