280 THE MOSLEM NEGRO. 



are like the wild animals, engaged from day to night 

 in seeking food, and ever watchful against the foes by 

 whom they are surrounded. The men who go out 

 hunting, the girls who go with their pitchers to the 

 village brook, are never sure that they will return ; 

 for there is always war with some neighbouring village, 

 and their method of making war is by ambuscade. 

 But besides these real and ordinary dangers, the savage 

 believes himself to be encompassed by evil spirits, 

 who may at any moment spring upon him in the guise 

 of a leopard, or cast down upon him the dead branch 

 of a tree. In order to propitiate these invisible 

 beings, his life is entangled with intricate rites ; it is 

 turned this way and that way as oracles are delivered, 

 or as omens appear. It is impossible to describe, or 

 even to imagine, the tremulous condition of the savage 

 mind ; yet the traveller can see from their aspect and 

 manners that they dwell in a state of never-ceasing 

 dread. 



Let us now suppose that a hundred years have 

 passed, and let us visit that village again. The place 

 itself, and the whole country around has been trans- 

 formed. The forest has disappeared, and in its stead 

 are fields covered with the glossy blades of the young 

 rice ; with the tall red tufted maize with the millet 

 and the Guinea corn ; with the yellow flowers of the to- 

 bacco plant, growing in wide fields ; and with large 

 shrubberies of cotton, the snowy wool peeping forth from 

 the expanding leaves. Before us stands a great town 

 surrounded by walls of red clay flanked by towers, and 

 with heavy wooden gates. Day dawns, and the women 

 come forth to the brook decorously dressed in blue 

 cotton robes passed over the hair as a hood. Men 

 ride forth on horseback, wearing white turbans and 



