One curious relation to external nature seems to have prevailed throughout all Africa, consisting in a special reverence, among different tribes, for certain selected objects. From one of these objects the tribe frequently derives its national appellation: if it is a living thing, they avoid killing it or using it as food. Serpents, particularly the gigantic pythons or boas, are everywhere reverenced. Some traces of adoration offered to the sun have been met with on the west coast; but, generally speaking, the superstitions of Africa are far less intellectual. These and many of their other practices have a common characteristic in the disappearance of all trace of their origin among the tribes observing them. To all inquiries they have the answer ready, that their fathers did so. There is in this, however, no great assurance of real antiquity, for tradition extends but a short way back. A reliance on grisgris, or amulets, worn about the person, belongs to Africa, perhaps from very ancient ages. Egypt was probably its source: a kind of literary character has been given to it by the Mohammedans. Throughout inland central Africa, sentences written on scraps of paper or parchment have a marketable value. An impostor or devotee may gain authority and profit in this way. As we pass southward we find this superstition sinking lower and lower in debasement: men there really cover or load themselves with all kinds of trumpery, and have a real and hearty confidence in bones, buttons, scraps, or almost any conceivable thing, as a security against any conceivable evil. The Kroomen, even, with their purser’s names, of _Jack Crowbar_, _Head Man_, and _Flying-Jib_, _Bottle of Beer_, _Pea Soup_, _Poor Fellow_, _Prince Will_, and others, taken on board the “Perry,” in Monrovia, were found now and then with their sharks’, tigers’ and panthers’ teeth, and small shells, on their ankles and wrists; although most of these people, from contact with the Liberians, have seen the folly of this practice, and dispensed with their charms. The Africans also have stationary _fetishes_, consisting in sacred places and sacred things. They have practices to inspire terror, or gain reverence in respect to which it is somewhat difficult to decide whether the actors in them are impostors or sincere. Idols in the forms of men, rude and frightful enough, are among these fetishes, but it cannot be said that idolatry of this kind prevails extensively in the country.