During some recent work in West Africa, a certain native chief
was anxious to prevent my explorations of such creeks and rivers
as led to trading districts which he desired to remain unknown.
Finding verbal dissuasions unavailing, and not liking to have
recourse to physical force, he tried as a last and somewhat
despairing resort to place supernatural obstacles in my way;
so he directed that at the entrance to these forbidden creeks
a live white fowl (lowest and cheapest sacrifice) should be
suspended from a palm-stake. Consequently, I was frequently
surprized and pleased at what I thought was a graceful token of
hospitality posted at different points of my journey, and never
failed to turn the fowl to account in my bill of fare. After
this manner of disposing of the fowl-fetish had occurred several
times, and yet I remained unpunished for my temerity by the
local gods, the natives gave up further opposition to my journey
as futile and expensive. In talking this over on my return with
one of the more advanced chiefs of the district, my native
friend shook his head half humorously, half seriously over the
decay of religious belief. A white fowl, he said, was “poor
man’s juju”; a few years ago it would have been a white goat,
and in his father’s time a white boy (albino negro), spitted
on a stake to bar the way, and this last would have been a
sacrifice that might well have moved the local gods of wold and
stream to intervene.--H. H. JOHNSTON, _Fortnightly
Review_.
(194)
=Battle Against Frailty=--See BODY, MASTERING THE.
=Beating Process a Necessity=--See DISCIPLINE.