Once more the Child at Worship, this time in the African jungle! “Ancestor-worship is the highest form of African Fetishism,--the usual fetish is the skull of the father, which the son keeps in a box. The father occasionally speaks to the son in dreams, and frequently communicates with him by omens. He helps him in all his enterprises, good and evil, and secures his success in love, in hunting, and in war. All those who have skulls are a secret society, which is powerful to rule and to tyrannize over others. Young boys are initiated into this society by rites and ceremonies that are revolting.... In the mild ceremony of the more civilized Fang towns, the boy who is to be initiated is made very drunk and taken blindfolded to the bush, to a place set apart for the use of the society. The ceremony continues several days. In one part of it the bandage is removed from his eyes at midnight, a low fire is burning, which gives a feeble light, and he finds himself surrounded by members of the society with faces and bodies frightfully distorted, and all the skulls of their ancestors exposed to view, together with the heads of persons who have recently died. Some one asks him what he sees. He replies that he sees only spirits, and solemnly declares that these are not men.... “Further up the river, a boy during initiation is usually placed for several days in a house alone, after being made to look so long at the sun that sometimes he faints, and when he is taken into the house he cannot at first see anything. Meantime the door is closed, and they all go away. Gradually he sees things around him, and at length discovers opposite him a corpse, in an early state of decomposition. He is kept there day and night during the ceremony. The men visit him and subject him to all sorts of indignities, in order to impress him with the necessity of absolute obedience to the society.... They believe that the skull of the father or other ancestor, when it has been properly prepared, becomes the residence of the ancestor. The son ... will keep the skull comfortably warm and dry, occasionally rubbing it with oil and red-wood powder, and will feed it bountifully.”[78] [Sidenote: Religious needs greater than all others in non-Christian lands.]