But the idea of reappearance in the body of a newly born child was formerly believed in, especially in regard to white people. Thirty years ago I wrote:[23] "Down the swift current of the Benita, as of other rivers on the coast, are swept floating islands of interlaced rushes, tangled vines, and water-lilies that, clinging to some projecting log from the marshy bank, had gathered the sand and mud of successive freshets, and gave a precarious footing for the pandanus, whose wiry roots bound all in one compact mass. Then some flood had torn that mass away, and the pandanus still waving its long, bayonet-like leaves, convolvuli still climbing and blooming, and birds still nesting trustfully, the floating island glided past native eyes down the stream, out over the bar, and on toward the horizon of broad ocean. What beyond? Native superstition said that at the bottom of the 'great sea' was 'whiteman's land'; that thither some of their own departed friends found their happy future, exchanging a dusky skin for a white one; that there white man's magic skill at will created the beads, and cloth, and endless wealth that came from that unknown land in ships, in whose masts and rigging and sails were recognized the transformed trees and vines and leaves of those floating islands. When on the 12th of July, 1866, a few with bated breath came to look on my little new-born Paull, the only white child most of the community had seen, and the first born in that Benita region, the old people said, 'Now our hopes are dead. Dying, we had hoped to become like you; but verily ye are born as we.'" Not long after I had arrived at Corisco Island in 1861 I observed among the many people who came to see the new missionary one man who quietly and unobtrusively but very steadily was gazing at me. After a while he mustered courage and addressed me: "Are you not my brother,--my brother who died at such a time, and went to White Man's Land?" I was at that time new to the superstitions of the country; his meaning had to be explained to me. His thought of relationship was not an impossible one, for many of the Bantu Negroes have somewhat Caucasian-like features. I have often seen men and women at the sight of whom I was surprised, and I would remark to a fellow-missionary: "How much this person reminds me of So-and-so in America!" This recognition of resemblance of features to white persons living in America was the third step in my acquaintance with native faces. At first, all Negro faces looked alike. Presently I learned differences; and when I had reached the third step, I felt that my acquaintance with African features was complete. III. LOCALITY.