Mother-right frequently prevails, rank and property being transmitted in the female line. There is some notion of a superhuman being vaguely identified with the sky, the rain, wind or thunderstorm. But all live in extreme terror of the medicine-man, who is openly courted, but inwardly detested, so that whenever it can be safely done the tables are turned, the witch-doctor is seized and tortured to death. _Timni, Kru, Sierra-Leonese, Liberians._ Somewhat similar conditions prevail all along the seaboard from Sierra Leone to, and beyond, Cape Palmas, disturbed or modified by the Liberian intruders from the North American plantations, and by the slaves rescued in the thirties and forties by the British cruisers and brought to Sierra Leone, where their descendants now live in settled communities under European influences. These "coloured" citizens of Sierra Leone and Liberia, who are so often the butt of cheap ridicule, and are themselves perhaps too apt to scorn the kindred "niggers" of the bush, have to be carefully distinguished from these true aborigines who have never been wrenched from their natural environment. In Sierra Leone the chief aboriginal groups on the coastlands are the _Timni_ of the Rokelle river, flanked north and south by two branches of the _Bulams_, and still further south the _Gallinas_, _Veys_ and _Golas_; in the interior the _Lokkos_, _Limbas_, _Konos_, and _Kussas_, with _Kurankos_, _Mendis_, _Hubus_, and other Mandingans and Fulahs everywhere in the Hinterland. Of all these the most powerful during the British occupation have always been the Timni (Timani, Temne), who sold to the English the peninsula on which now stands Freetown, but afterwards crying off the bargain, repeatedly tried to drive the white and coloured intruders into the sea. They are a robust people of softened Negro type, and more industrious farmers than most of the other natives. Like the Wolofs they believe in the virtue both of Christian and Moslem amulets, but have hitherto lent a deaf ear to the preachers of both these religions. Nevertheless the Protestant missionaries have carefully studied the Timni language, which possesses an oral literature rich in legends, proverbs, and folklore[149].