It can easily be understood how this reverence paid to the relics of one’s ancestors would develope into the worship of their spirits. The Equatorial Savage believes that the manes of his forefathers influence his life and fortunes entirely to his advantage, and by a dying friend or relative will often send messages to them. Mr. Reade adds that a son has been known to kill his aged mother from a conviction that her spirit would be of more service to him than her substance; a reason for matricide which would hardly be accepted as conclusive in civilised countries! The savage lives, however, in constant communion and sympathy with the spirit-world. The visions which come to him in his dreams, and the sounds which he fancies himself to hear, are those of the Unseen. And as he is always brooding upon his dreams and relating them to his friends, he necessarily dreams the more, until it becomes difficult for him to draw a line between the dream and the reality. When any calamity befalls the tribe, or at the approach of any imminent danger, they gather together on the brink of some lofty bluff, or on the forest’s haunted threshold, and stretching their arms towards the sky, while the women wail and the children weep, they call upon the spirits of the departed to come and help them. They have a remarkable ceremony which illustrates the force and vividness of their belief in spirits: When the dead are weary of staying in the bush, they come for one of their people whom they most affect. And the spirit will say to the man: “I am tired of dwelling in the bush; please to build for me in the town a little house as close as possible to your own.” And he tells him to dance and sing too; and accordingly the man assembles the women at night to join in dance and song. Then, next day, the people repair to the grave of the _Obambo_, or ghost, and make a rude idol; after which the bamboo bier on which the body is conveyed to the grave, and some of the dust of the ground, are carried into a little hut erected near the house of the visited, and a white cloth is draped over the door. It is a curious fact, which seems to show that they have a legend something like the old Greek myth of Charon and the Styx, that in one of the songs chanted during this ceremony occurs the following line: “You are well dressed, but you have no canoe to carry you across to the other side.”