Ashanti and probably borrowed by the Hebrews from the African
Egyptians. 5. The formal and ceremonial observance of new moons;
but the Wanyamwezi and other tribes also hail the appearance of
the lesser light, like the Moslems, who, when they sight the
Hilal (crescent), ejaculate a short prayer for blessings
throughout the month which it ushers in. 6. A specified time of
mourning for the dead (common to all barbarians as to civilized
races), during which their survivors wear soiled clothes (an
instinctive sign of grief, as fine dresses are of joy), and shave
their heads (doubtless done to make some difference from every-
day times), accompanied with ceremonial purifications (what
ancient people has not had some such whim?). 7. The system of
Runda or forbidden meats; but every traveller has found this
practice in South as in East Africa, and I noticed it among the
Somal who, even when starving, will not touch fish nor fowl.
Briefly, external resemblances and coincidences like these could
be made to establish cousinhood between a cockney and a cockatoo;
possibly such discovery of Judaism dates from the days about
1840, when men were mad to find the "Lost Tribes," as if they had
not quite enough to do with the two which remain to them.

The Mpongwe and their neighbours have advanced a long step beyond
their black brethren in Eastern Africa. No longer contented with
mere Fetishes, the Egyptian charms in which the dreaded ghost
"sits,"[FN#12] meaning, is "bound," they have invented idols, a
manifest advance toward that polytheism and pantheism which lead
through a triad and duad of deities to monotheism, the finial of
the spiritual edifice. In Eastern Africa I know but one people,
the Wanyika near Mombasah, who have certain images called
"Kisukas;" they declare that this great medicine, never shown to