and the Mpongwe. 
93 
Chaillu a “ Mbwiri,” they meant that the white 
man had been bleached by the grave as Dante had 
been darkened by his visit below, and consequently 
he was a subject of fear and awe. They have a 
material, evanescent, intelligible future, not an 
immaterial, incomprehensible eternity ; the ghost 
endures only for awhile and perishes like the 
memory of the little-great name. Hence the 
ignoble dread in East and West Africa of a death 
which leads to a shadowy world, and eventually to 
utter annihilation. Seeing nought beyond the 
present-future, there is no hope for them in the 
grave; they wail and sorrow with a burden of 
despair. “ Ame-kwisha ”—he is finished—is the 
East African’s last word concerning kinsman and 
friend. “ All is done for ever,” sing the West 
Africans. Any allusion to loss of life turns their 
black skins blue ; “Yes,” they exclaim, “ it is bad to 
die, to leave house and home, wife and children ; no 
more to wear soft cloth, nor eat meat, nor “ drink ” 
tobacco, and rum.” “ Never speak of that” the 
moribund will exclaim with a shudder; such is the 
ever-present horror of their dreadful and dreary times 
of sickness, always aggravated by suspicions of 
witchcraft, the only cause which their imperfect 
knowledge of physics can assign to death—even 
Van Helmont asserted, “ Deus non fecit mortem.” 
The peoples, who, like those of Dahome, have 
a distinct future world, have borrowed it, I cannot 
