But, in this dread of witches, the whole superstition of the Bongo culminates and exhausts itself; and we Europeans may well ask what real right have we, with all our advancement in knowledge, to presume to reproach them? We cannot resist the impression that these poor Bongo are infinitely more free from hundreds of superstitious fallacies than many of those who boast of their civilization; much more so, for instance, than the Mohammedans of the Soudan, where the idlest of superstitions prevail in every household. Let nature be free, and the germs of energy in man’s spirit will develop themselves, without overstepping their proper limits, in trustful dependence upon the presiding spirit which controls all thought. That the spirit of man, moreover, revolves in a circle, is demonstrated by the old man becoming again a child. A philosopher might fairly speculate (in the spirit of Bernardin de St. Pierre, when he advocated a worship of Nature) whether this land would not have been happier if the Moslems had never set foot upon its soil. They brought a religion that was destitute of morality; they introduced contagion rather than knowledge; they even suppressed the true doctrines of Mohammed their prophet, which would have enfranchised the very people whom they oppressed, and have raised them to a condition of brotherhood, and of equality. [Sidenote: BONGO SURGERY.] The method of proceeding among the Bongo with the sick and wounded is invariably of the very simplest character. When the disorder is internal, and the origin cannot be detected, the treatment consists merely in liberal applications of very hot water. The patient is stretched upon the ground, and sprinkled by means of leafy boughs with boiling water from vessels that are placed close by. Somewhat more expert is their proceeding in the case of the wounded. It once chanced that I saw a group of sufferers brought back from one of the raids that had been made into the territory of the Dinka. The wounds had nearly all been inflicted by the lances of the adversary. With remarkable fortitude the patients all submitted to the practice of the country, which consisted in the introduction of a number of setons, made of the strong and fibrous bast of the grewia, into the injured parts, in order to reduce the inflammation. Amongst others, I saw a knee, which was immensely swollen, subject to the operation of being pierced in every direction by setons of this sort, until it was larded like a roast hare. With the exception of red ochre the Bongo, like most of their neighbours, are not acquainted with any mineral which they can apply to a wound, either as a reduceut or an antiseptic. As medicines to accelerate the natural processes of cure, they make use of the astringent bitter barks of certain trees like the Hymenocardia, the Butyrospermum, and the Prosopis, which are here known as the “gere,” the “kor,” and the “göll.” Syphilis, which now makes its