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THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



highest types of mankind. But old creeds die hard, 

 and error, founded upon the instincts and feelings of 

 human nature borrows the coherence and uniformity 

 of truth. That Fetissism is a belief common to man in 

 the childhood of his spiritual life, may be proved by the 

 frequent and extensive remains of the faith which the 

 cretinism of the Hamitic race has perpetuated amongst 

 them to the present day, still sprouting like tares even 

 in the fair field of revealed religion. The dread of 

 ghosts, for instance, which is the mainstay of Fetissism, 

 is not inculcated in any sacred book, yet the belief is 

 not to be abolished. Thus the Rakshasa of the Hindus 

 is a disembodied spirit, doing evil to mankind ; and the 

 ghost of the prophet Samuel, raised by the familiar of 

 the Witch of Endor, was the immortal part of a mortal 

 being, still connected with earth, and capable of return- 

 ing to it. Through the Manes, the Umbra, and the 

 Spectrum of the ancients, the belief has descended to 

 the moderns, as the household words ghost, goblin, and 

 bogle, revenant, polter-geist, and spook, Duh, Dusha, 

 and Dukh attest. Precisely similar to the African 

 ghost-faith is the old Irish belief in Banshees, Pookas, 

 and other evil entities ; the corporeal frame of the dead 

 forms other bodies, but the spirit hovers in the air, 

 watching the destiny of friends, haunting houses, killing 

 children, injuring cattle, and causing disease and de- 

 struction. Everywhere, too, their functions are the 

 same: all are malevolent to the living, and they are 

 seldom known to do good. The natural horror and 

 fear of death which may be observed even in the lower 

 animals has caused the dead to be considered vindictive 

 and destructive. 



Some missionaries have detected in the habit, which 

 prevails throughout Eastern and Western Africa, of 



