Here, then, is a state of mental degradation that to us looks almost like insanity. I have only touched upon the salient points of their belief. One can never convey to others any adequate impression of the stifling mental atmosphere of an African community, with its stagnation and torpor, depressing even the mind of the missionary and in some instances fairly threatening his faith. My experience of that atmosphere has been such that I have the deepest sympathy and compassion for traders and government officials living often solitary in such communities; whose beliefs and morals are often not the result of personal convictions, but merely a reflection of the beliefs, traditions and moral restraints of the social community in which they have lived. Upon the beliefs of such men there is a power of gravitation in the mentality of an African community that acts like the Magnetic Mountain of the Arabian fable, which, as ships approached it from the sea, drew out of them every nail, bolt and rivet, and left them a wreck of floating timbers, to be flung at random upon the lonely shore or buried in its sand. At the first approach the mind of the African seems utterly inaccessible. His mental powers are paralyzed; he has forgotten how to think. If his mental redemption is possible where must it begin? One day long ago, when a fellow missionary and myself were together in the Bulu interior, a native young man, in response to our inquiry, expressed the African belief that the rainbow is a snake. It has the power—which many men also have—of making itself invisible. The missionary, reflecting that superstition is simply ignorance of nature and nature’s laws, resolved to undertake immediately the boy’s education. The sun was shining brightly, and the missionary, having sent the native to fetch a bucket of water, told him that he himself would then and there make a rainbow. He asked me to stand on the porch and throw the bucketful of water in a certain direction, while he took his stand on the ground with the boy by his side. Now it happens that in matters of science I have an inveterate inclination to be content with theory. I never attempted a practical experiment in my life that did not miscarry. Besides, everybody knows that a bucket is an exceedingly awkward instrument with which to take accurate aim. The water came down on the upturned faces of the two eager scientists. The black man has an abiding antipathy to the fourth element; and this native evidently regarded the performance as a punishment for his unbelief in regard to the substance of the rainbow. He ducked his head and shouted: “I believe; I believe; master, please don’t do it again.”