Among the Fang the offering of human sacrifice to placate the spirits is not customary. Witchcraft probably usurps the place of this form of human sacrifice. But among the more highly organized tribes of the Calabar and the Niger, where individuals wield despotic power, multitudes have been offered in sacrifice to appease the hostility of the spirits: and they would still be offered but for the presence of foreign governments. It took the English many years to suppress the annual sacrifice of human beings to the crocodiles of the Niger. I once had the pleasure of travelling with that great man and great missionary, Mr. Ramseyer (_Father Ramseyer_, all white men called him), a member of the Basle Mission, who for thirty years lived at Kumassi in the Ashantee Territory; and I heard from Mr. Ramseyer himself the story of Prempeh, that beastly king of Kumassi, whose fetish-trees were regularly watered with the blood of human beings; and who, when at length his lust for blood had become insatiable, had a slave put to death each night for his entertainment—and probably, also, to appease the hostility of the spirits. King Prempeh was finally captured by the English, and not long afterwards died in the prison at Sierra Leone. Next to fear of the spirits the most demoralizing factor is the African’s distrust of his fellow men. The one is a corollary of the other. The African, like other savages, before giving one a drink swallows a mouthful of it himself to prove that it is not poisoned. In some of the large tribes of the Niger, where a king _is_ a king, it was the practice (until the English government interfered with custom) for a king, upon his accession to the throne, to put to death all his brothers and half-brothers. In one of those tribes the blood royal was held in such reverence that under no circumstances would they shed it; so they used to put the royal brothers to death by stuffing the mouth and nostrils full of cotton. It was a far more horrible death than cutting the throat; but it was respectful. On one occasion, when my heart had been rent by the dreadful cruelty inflicted upon a certain woman whom I knew very well, who had been charged with witchcraft because of the death of her husband, I addressed the whole population of the town, and after holding forth for some time in wrathful denunciation of their unreasoning suspicion, I asked why a man’s wives must always be the first to be charged with his death. An elderly chief; rising to his feet, gently interrupted me, and using my native name, _Mote-ke-ye_ (_Man-who-never-sleeps_), he said: “Ah, Mote-ke-ye, I would like to ask one question: Are you a married man?”