"The fetich is sometimes inclined to be a nuisance. On one occasion I wanted to build an out-house at the far end of a plantation, where tools and other implements might be stored. I was told by the chief, however, that this was fetich ground, and that terrible misfortunes would follow any attempt to build on it. I tried to get some closer idea of the fetich, but could get no more material information than a recital of vague terrors of the kind that frighten children at night. So I began building my out-house, during the course of which operation some monkeys came and sat in the trees, highly interested in the proceedings. In some indefinite way I gathered that the fetich power was regarded as being invested in these monkeys, or that they were the embodiment of the fetich idea, or anything else you please. But I could not have my work interfered with by the ghosts of a lot of chattering apes, and the fears of those big children the natives; so I witch-doctored the monkeys after an improved recipe of my own,--I shot the lot. Thereafter the spell was supposed to be lifted, and no farther objections were raised; but the empty cartridge cases were seized upon by the men as charms against any further manifestations in the same place. I am glad to say none occurred; the spell I had used was too potent!" Captain Burrows was probably an efficient administrator. But, like many foreigners, he evidently chose to ride, rough shod, over natives' prejudices, regarding them as idle superstitions, and unable or unwilling to investigate their philosophy. I see, however, from his story, that he had gotten hold of a part of the truth. That ground on which he desired to build was probably an old graveyard. The native chief very naturally did not wish it to be disturbed. Monkeys that gather on the trees in the vicinity of a graveyard are supposed to be possessed by the spirits of those buried there. An ordinary individual would have been forcibly prevented had he attempted what Captain Burrows did. He had a foreign government at his back, and the natives submitted. Their dead and their monkeys, sacred _pro tempore_, had succumbed to the superior power of the white man's cartridges. Their only satisfaction was to retain the empty shells as souvenirs. CHAPTER VII THE FETICH--A WORSHIP Worship is an eminent part of every form of religion, but it is not essential to it. True, most religions have some form of worship. But a belief would still be a religion, even if it were so insignificant or so degraded or so indifferent as not to care to express itself in rites or ceremonies. Fetichism, whose claim to a right to be reckoned as a religion some have been disposed to dispute, expresses itself by most of the visible and audible means used in the cults of other forms of religion.