The Africans have a superstitious dread of writing and regard it as a bad fetich. When the African traveler, Stanley, had almost finished his journey through the Dark Continent, he was one day making some entries in his note-book. This book contained all the important results of his great journey. Seeing him writing the savages surrounded him and demanded that he destroy the “tara-tara,” as they called it, lest it should injure them. They said that those black lines on the paper would bring sickness and death to them and their animals unless the book was burned. The savages were determined to get the book. Only by a trick could he save either the book or his own life. He went to his tent and managed to exchange his note-book for a copy of Shakespeare’s works. This he burned “to please his friends,” as he told them. [Illustration: IDOLS WITH MIRRORS IN THEIR BODIES.] The Africans have idols of all shapes and sizes and made of all sorts of materials. Some of these are provided with looking-glasses in their stomachs, but for what purpose we do not know. They have a few god-houses or huts. Their continent is dark not only because peopled in the main by peoples whose skins are dark, but because the light of religion seems almost to have died out and darkness to have covered the land and all of the people. WITCHCRAFT. [Illustration: A WITCH DOCTOR.] To polygamy and slavery add witchcraft superstitions, and the degradation of Africa is properly called “desperate” degradation. It may be doubted whether polygamy and slavery are as great obstacles to civilization as are these superstitions. These are interlaced with the whole structure of African society. No one is supposed to die from natural causes; disease is charged to witchcraft. No one is killed in war, in hunting, by drowning or mischance, but it is charged to witchcraft. The witches must be found out and tortured to confession and death. “I was asked,” says Du Chaillu, whose representations of witchcraft superstitions are abundantly confirmed by other travelers and missionaries, “to go and see an old friend of mine, Mpomo, who was sick. They had spent the night before drumming about his bed to drive out the devil. But I soon saw that neither drumming nor medicine would help the poor fellow. The film of death was in his eyes. He held out his hand to me and feebly said: ‘Chally, save me, for I am dying.’