328 
NOTIONS OF A DEITY. 
emolument, it may probably become general, and prove 
at least one beneficial result of the Expedition. 
The greater proportion of the Iddah people are 
Pagans, though with a confused impression of Mahome- 
danism, which obtains more among the richer persons, 
who can afford to pay the Mallams for such limited 
instruction as they can convey orally. No public idols 
are allowed, yet most of them have little amulets, which 
hold much the same place in their estimation as the 
wooden Fetiches of the Ibus and other tribes. 
They have all a clearer notion of God as an Almighty 
Ruler and Divinity, than any negroes we had met with, 
and offer up their prayers direct to Him, but they 
believe in the intermediate agency of good and evil 
spirits, charms, and MaUam influence. They look 
forward to a heaven and hell, or places where good or 
wicked people are hereafter to inhabit ; this is most likely 
derived from the extraordinary views their religious 
preceptors hold up to them of the Islam scale of rewards 
and punishments. 
Human sacrifices always take place on the death of 
the King ; on which occasion, one or more wives, and 
several eunuchs of his establishment, are killed, to 
accompany the great man in the new world he has 
entered upon. Every sovereign, on coming to the 
throne, does this also, to exemplify the control which 
his position gives him over the lives of his people. 
The natives do not regard the subject with horror or 
