468 ABSENCE OF A RELIGION 



races are, according to the nearly universal testimony of 

 travellers, in this condition. Much evidence of this has been 

 already given, but it would be easy to collect a great many 

 other statements to the same effect. , Thus Burton states that 

 some of the tribes in the Lake districts of Central Africa 

 " admit neither God, nor angel, nor devil/'* The Tasmanians 

 had no word for a creator, f The South American Indians of 

 the Gran Chaco are said by the missionaries to have " no reli- 

 gious or idolatrous belief or worship whatever ; neither do they 

 possess any idea of God, or of a supreme being. They make 

 no distinction between right and wrong, and have therefore 

 neither fear nor hope of any present or future punishment 

 or reward, nor any mysterious terror of some supernatural 

 power, whom they might seek to assuage by sacrifices or 

 superstitious rites." J According to Burchell, the Bachapins 

 (Caffres) had no form of worship or religion. They thought 

 "that everything made itself, and that trees and herbage grew 

 by their own will/' They had no belief in a good deity, but 

 some vague idea of an evil Being. Indeed the first idea of a 

 God is almost always as an evil spirit. In the Pellew Islands, 

 Wilson found no religious buildings, nor any sign of religion. 

 According to Spix and Martius, the Brazilian Indians believed 

 in the existence of a devil, but not of a God. || Some of the 

 tribes, according to Bates and Wallace, were entirely without 

 religion. The Yenadies and the Villees are, according to 

 Dr. Short, entirely without any belief in a future state. U" 

 Captain Grant could find "no distinct form of religion" in 

 some of the comparatively civilised tribes visited by him.** 

 And, again, Hooker tells us that the Lepchas of Northern 

 India have no religion. The Toupinambas of Brazil had no 



* Transactions of the Ethnological Travels in S. Africa, vol. ii., p. 550. 



Society, New Series, vol. i., p. 323. || Reise in Brasilien, vol. i., p. 379. 



f Rev. T. Dove. Tasmanian Journal If Proceedings of Madras Government, 



of Science, vol. i., p. 249. Revenue Department, May, 1864. 



J Voice of Pity, vol. ix., p. 220. ** A Walk across Africa, p. 145. 



