to the unknown and dimly conceived powers of the universe about him! We have no word to render the Fijian _mana_, the Siouan _wakan_, the Malagasy _andria-manitra_. {18} Conversely, scarce a savage language can render our word “God.” Over and over again missionaries have sought, and sought in vain, for a native word for the purpose. When they have fixed upon one, as often as not they have had to confess a blunder; and many times in despair they have invented a word. The idea embodied in the acts by which the mysterious relations between man and the supernatural are emphasized and knit together is equally incapable of translation by any one vocable. A Roman Catholic missionary, speaking of the religious assembly of the Creeks of North America, says: “The _mitewewin_ represents the highest expression of magic (_maeghiw_ or _maskikiy_) among the nations of the Algonkian stock. The word, in fact, signifies at the same time labour, occupation, judgement, adoration, and sacrifice. It is a religious act addressed to the _powakans_, or animal fetishes, and a sort of Illinoian freemasonry requiring initiation and inviolable secrecy; it is a camp-meeting…; it is the grand council of an entire nation.”[18.1] These sentences afford an excellent example of the difficulty of translating the native ideas into English words. They unite a brave and more or less successful attempt to convey the notion of _mitewewin_, with incidental but none the less certain failures in the cases of _maeghiw_ or _maskikiy_ and _powakan_. For none of them would a single English word, or even a phrase, be adequate.