This, however, was but one testimony to the relic worship of the slave islands. Along the roadsides, in secluded corners of out of the way roças, nestling in plantain groves, the traveller may see miniature chapels constructed from rustic forest tree branches, very similar to the fetish houses of the mainland of Africa. In most of these one also sees little prayer-stools, and in all of them a rude cross roughly cut out with the native axe and the cross pieces bound together with forest vines. Most of these crosses are surrounded by native pagan charms, and thus all that is least essential in Christianity is joined together in native religious fervour with the superstitions of paganism, and this gives a melancholy impression of the result of the years of toil and sacrifice by men and women devoted to the theory of the Christian Faith. [Sidenote: ICHABOD] Ichabod is written along every roadside and in every ruined chapel; the very images in decay seem to utter the word, and the mind is compelled to recall the fact that Christianity in creed only, without Christian practice, is foredoomed. Surely the curse of the miserable slaves of generations ago rests upon everything on those islands; by their agony and bloody sweat they toiled to erect those magnificent churches, the crack of the whip on the slave plantations extorted the gold which purchased the images of the Virgin, to add lustre to countless churches and to purchase images of the compassionate Christ for the cross roads and public places. One wonders what all this parade meant to the slaves at the time. They have long ceased to suffer the bonds of slavery, or the crack of the whip; those slaves whose toil built the churches and bought the crucifixes have gone, and though decay everywhere marks the one-time existence of an unholy Christianity, one element remains and flourishes—a slavery, without any hope beyond that which may be inspired by the hybrid of effete Christianity wedded to African superstition. [Illustration: THE CRUCIFIX IN AFRICAN FETISH HUT ON THE ISLAND OF SAN THOMÉ.] [Illustration: RUIN OF ONCE IMPOSING CHURCH ON THE ISLAND OF PRINCIPE.]