398 
ITS SUPPOSED ORIGIN. 
singular on many accounts. It is one which nearly 
all tribes adhere to ; and though there may be some 
slight difference in the period, still it is common to 
all ; and the manner in which it is carried out among 
all of them, eyinces that it must have had its origin 
from one and the same source. Thus the Krus, Intas, 
Dahomians, Ibus, Eggarahs, and the littoral inhabi- 
tants of Oameroons, Bonny, Calabar, Fernando Po,^ — ■ 
all mark the season of planting their yams and grain, 
by a religious ritual, and a festive meeting of all the 
tribe. With the exception of the Ashantis, and per- 
haps the Ibus and Eggarahs, the ceremony is un- 
tainted by human blood; the offerings being goats, 
sheep, and white fowls, portions of which, after being 
roasted, are laid together with palm-wine, as oblations 
before the idols : this done, they continue the enter- 
tainment for several days. Whether this had any 
connexion with the feast observed in the month Athyr, 
when the Egyptian husbandman began to sow his 
corn, or was copied from the form of general thanks- 
giving to the deities, on the rising of the fertilizing 
waters of the Nile, it would be difficult to surmise; 
but we may reason, that it was taken from some one 
of the many similar Coptic institutions. 
It has often been a question, whence so many of the 
West African races borrowed the practice of circum- 
cision, which although not universally followed in any 
tribe, is yet pretty generally adopted by the inhabitants 
of the banks of the Niger, and by the subdivisions of the 
