Mr. Froude's Negrophobia. 119 
They served the usual logs and stones 
With all the usual rites and terrors, 
And swallowed all their fathers' bones, 
And swallowed all their fathers' errors. 
All things considered, now, is it not matter for wonder- 
ment that the cult of Obeah is not more in vogue than is 
actually the case? As Artemus Ward observed, 
" there is a good deal of human nature in the Black Man." 
The African, like the European, cannot all at once 
divest himself of the degraded form of Religion in which 
he and his fathers were brought up : hence those who 
live in the West Indies cannot but be struck with the 
marvellous progress made by the Black Man towards a 
more civilised view of Religion. So far from relapsing 
into Obeah, the majority of West Indian Africans have 
emerged from that form of Religious Bondage, and the 
remainder will do so in due time. Now and again an 
idle rogue tries to make a living out of the credulous by 
setting himself up as an Obeah man. If he bring himself 
within the clutches of the Law, he should be dealt with as 
a common rogue. A much more powerful Medicine Man 
now roams at large. This is the Schoolmaster. Working 
hand in hand with him are the Ministers of Religion : 
Anglicans, Roman Catholics, and Wesleyans and others, 
who exercise their beneficent influence to a much greater 
extent than Mr. FROUDE wots of. Then, there is the good 
example of the resident Whites, to whose high tone 
of life our Tourist can bear testimony. Altogether, the 
outlook is, surely, not a hopeless one : and especially 
when it is borne in mind that, in the latter part of the 
Nineteenth Century more progress in civilization is made 
in the West Indies in a few years, than used to be accom- 
