In his list of scapegoats, Dr. Frazer refers to a case of human sacrifice witnessed by the Rev. J. C. Taylor at Onitsha, on the Niger.[229] A young woman was drawn, with her face to the earth, from the king's house to the river. As the people drew her along, they cried, "Wickedness! Wickedness!" so as to notify to the passers-by to screen themselves from witnessing the dismal scene. The sacrifice was to take away the iniquities of the land. The body was dragged along in a merciless manner "as if the weight of all their wickedness were thus carried away"; and it was finally drowned in the river. Our informant also heard that there was a man killed, as a sacrifice for the sins of the king. "Thus two human beings were offered as sacrifices, to propitiate their heathen deities, thinking that they would thus atone for the individual sins of those who had broken God's laws during the past year. . . . Those who had fallen into gross sins during the past year--such as incendiarisms, thefts, fornications, adulteries, witchcrafts, incests, slanders, &c.--were expected to pay in twenty-eight _ngugus_, or _£_2 0_s._ 7½_d._, as a fine; and this money was taken into the interior, to purchase two sickly persons, to be {63} offered as a sacrifice for all these abominable crimes--one for the land, and one for the river."[230] As will be seen in a following chapter, human sacrifices to rivers are very common in the Niger country. In the cases mentioned by the English missionary, the idea of vicarious expiation is obvious. But I find no evidence of actual sin-transference. [Footnote 229: Frazer, _op. cit._ iii. 109 _sq._] [Footnote 230: Crowther and Taylor, _Gospel on the Banks of the Niger_, p. 344 _sq._]