soul to be immortal, and as
impalpable as a shadow, and that they were much afraid of the
return of deceased spirits to haunt them. They were accustomed to
pray to their departed countrymen not to molest them, but to stay
away in quiet. They also employed exorcisers to lay these ill
omened ghosts. Meiners relates of some inhabitants of the Guinea
coast that their fear of ghosts and their childish credulity
reached such a pitch that they threw their dead into the ocean, in
the expectation of thus drowning soul and body together.

Superstitions as gross and lawless still have full sway. Wilson,
whose travels and residence there for twenty years have enabled
him to furnish the most reliable information, says, in his recent
work,1 "A native African would as soon doubt his present as his
future state of being." Every dream, every stray suggestion of the
mind, is interpreted, with unquestioning credence, as a visit from
the dead, a whisper from a departed soul. If a man wakes up with
pains in his bones or muscles, it is because his spirit has
wandered abroad in the night and been flogged by some other
spirit. On certain occasions the whole community start up at
midnight, with clubs, torches, and hideous yells, to drive the
evil spirits out of the village. They seem to believe that the
souls of dead men take rank with good or bad spirits, as they have
themselves been good or bad in this life. They bury with the
deceased clothing, ornaments, utensils,

1 Western Africa, ch. xii.

and statedly convey food to the grave for the use of the
revisiting spirit. With the body of king Weir of the Cavalla
towns, who was buried in December of 1854, in presence of several
missionaries, was interred a quantity of rice, palm oil, beef, and
rum: it was supposed the ghost of the sable monarch would come
back and consume these articles. The African tribes, where their
notions have not been modified by Christian or by Mohammedan
teachings, appear to have no definite idea of a heaven or of a
hell; but future reward or punishment is considered under the
general conception of an association, in the disembodied state,
with the benignant or with the demoniacal powers.

The New Zealanders imagine that the souls of the dead go to a
place beneath the earth, called Reinga. The path to this region is
a precipice close to the sea shore at the North Cape. It is said
that the natives who live in the neighborhood can at night hear
sounds caused by t