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 help thinking, from Egypt. And when an
African chief said in my presence to a Yahoo-like naval officer,
"When so be I die, I come up for white man! When so be you die,
you come up for monkey!" my suspicion is that he had distorted
the doctrine of some missionary. Man would hardly have a future
without a distinct priestly class whose interest it is to teach
"another and a better,"--or a worse.

Certain missionaries in the Gaboon River have detected evidences
of Judaism amongst the Mpongwe, which deserve notice but which
hardly require detailed refutation. 1. Circumcision, even on the
eighth day as amongst the Efik of the old Calabar River; but this
is a familiar custom borrowed from Egypt by the Semites; it is
done in a multitude of ways, which are limited only by necessity;
the resemblance of the Mpongwe rite to that of the Jews, though
remarkable, is purely accidental. 2. The division of tribes into
separate families and frequently into the number twelve; but this
again appears fortuitous; almost all the West African people have
some such division, and they range upwards from three, as amongst
the Kru-men, the Gallas, the Wakwafi,and the Wanyika.[FN#11] 3.
Exogamy or the rigid interdiction of marriage between clans and
families nearly related; here again the Hindu and the Somal
observe the custom rigidly, whilst the Jews and Arabs have ever
taken to wife their first cousins. 4. Sacrifices with blood-
sprinkling upon altars and door-posts; a superstition almost
universal, found in Peru and Mexico as in Palestine, preserved in