“It appears from Bosman’s account, about 1700,” says Tylor, “that in the religion of Whydah, the sea ranked only as younger brother in the three divine orders, below the serpents and trees. But at present, as appears from Captain Burton’s evidence, the religion of Whydah extends through Dahowe, and the Divine Sea has risen in rank. The youngest brother of the triad is Hu, the ocean or sea. Formerly, it was subject to chastisement, like the Hellespont, if idle or useless. The Huno, or ocean priest, is now considered the highest of all, a fetish king, at Whydah, where he has 500 wives. At stated times he repairs to the beach, begs ‘Agbwe’, the ocean-god, not to be boisterous, and throws in rice and corn, oil and beans, cloth, cowries and other valuables. At times the King sends as an ocean sacrifice from Agbowe a man carried in a hammock, with the dress, the stool, and the umbrella of a caboceer; a canoe takes him out to sea, where he is thrown to the sharks. While in these descriptions the individual divine personality of the sea is so well marked, an account of the closely related slave coast religion states that a great god dwells in the sea, and it is to him, not to the sea itself, that offerings are cast in. In South America the idea of the divine sea is clearly marked in the Peruvian worship of Mamacocha, Mother Sea, giver of food to men.”[16] The Egyptians gratefully recognize how much they owe to the Nile and in their hymns they thank the Nile-god. Statues of the god are painted green and red, representing the colour of the river in June when it is a bright green before the inundation and the ruddy hue when its wells are charged with the red mud brought down from the Abyssinian mountains. We have already noticed that the spring was and is still adored as Lord Almighty’s daughter by the Zoroastrians. The Zoroastrian scriptures record how she was worshipped by the Heavenly Father Himself when He wanted her assistance in inducing _Zarathushtra_ to become His prophet. Even to this day a festival is held in her honour by the Parsis in Bombay on the tenth day of the eighth month of the Parsi year. This day as well as the month bear the name Aban. The Parsis flock in numbers on this auspicious day to the sea-beach to offer prayers. Not unlike the Iranians the Greeks also adored their marine goddess Aphrodite, “born in the foam of the sea.” Greek folklore tells us how this goddess rose from the sea opposite the island of Cythera. She was also the goddess of love and was in earlier times regarded as the goddess of domestic life and of the relations between families, being in some places associated with Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, or regarded, like Artemis, as a guardian of children and young maidens. Odysseus invoked the river of Scheria, Skamandros had his priest and Spercheios his grove, and sacrifice was given to the river-god Acheloos, eldest of the three thousand river-children, and old Okeanos.