_Bosman_ (1700—Bosman’s Guinea) mentions 5 classes of people: (1) kings, (2) chief men who take care of a city or village, (3) those that have got riches, (4) the common people, (5) slaves. [This exactly applies to the Eastern tribes.] In their salutations the first question is, “How did you sleep?” to which the reply is, “Very well” (G). At Fida, if any visit his superior, he falls on his knees, kisses the earth, claps his hands. [Here we find kneeling and clapping the hands.] The women suckle the infants for two or three years. Child-bearing is not troublesome; here is no long lying-in nor expensive gossiping or groaning feasts (44). The chief handiwork is smithery. They have no notion of steel. A hard stone is their anvil, and they have a pair of tongs, a small pair of bellows, and three or more pipes (H). When they begin a war, drive a bargain, travel, or attempt anything of importance, their first business is to consult their false god by means of their priest, who may tell them to offer sheep, &c. [14. Another resemblance to the Zulu and Kafirs. Among the simpler Yao, a man may be his own priest.] Questions may be put to the idol, which are answered in this way:—About 20 bits of leather are shuffled by the priest; if those indicating success come much together, success is announced (I). Public general religious exercises are customary on account of great drought (20). They kill a cock or a sheep to their god in words alone: for when it is dead they immediately fall upon it, tearing it to pieces with their fingers (27). Most of them believe that after death they live in another world in the same character as here; but they have no idea of future rewards or punishments (10). They drive devils out of villages (107). Children don’t inherit their father’s goods (97). If a woman is with child for the first time, rich offerings are made to the false god to obtain her safe delivery (53). They call in medicine men when sick, who prescribe offerings to deities. They have medicaments of the roots, branches, and gum of trees, and about 30 different herbs (I). From various other writers on Western Central Africa we gather the following facts:— When a child is 7 days old, the parents make a small feast, imagining that the infant is past its greatest dangers; and in order to prevent evil spirits from doing it any mischief, they strew all the ways with dressed victuals to appease them (44). If a man like a virgin, he tells the most considerable among her relations, who goes to her house and asks her of her relations, who, if she is not before promised, seldom deny the request: then the bridegroom clothes his future bride with a rich suit of clothes and ornaments (48).