An American missionary,[180] who lived four years amongst the Mpongwes, one of the most important nations of Central Africa, the Mandingos, and the Grebos, and who knew their language perfectly, declares that they had neither religion, nor priests, nor idolatry, nor any religious assemblies whatsoever. Dr. Livingstone says the same thing concerning the Bechuanas.[181] The Austrian missionaries, established upon the distant banks of the White Nile, have met with the same want of religion, the same void[182] in the mind. In fact, among the Caffres, the name which they give to the Divine Being, as among the Hottentots, is undeniable evidence that they formerly had no idea of anything similar. This name is _Tixo_, and its history is too curious not to be related; it is composed of two words which, together, signify the “wounded knee.” It was, they say, the name of a doctor or sorcerer, well known among the Hottentots and Namaquas, on account of some wound which he had received on his knee. Having been held in great estimation for his extraordinary power during his life, the Wounded Knee continued to be invoked even after his death, as being able to comfort and protect; and consequently his name became the term which best represented, to the minds of his countrymen, their confused idea of the missionaries’ God! As to the Esquimaux, since 1612, Whitebourne wrote that they had no knowledge of God, and lived without any form of civil government. And we can add to this distant testimony the following lines from the journal of Sir John Ross, who lived for a long time in the midst of them. “Did they comprehend anything of all that I attempted to explain, explaining the simplest things in the simplest manner that I could devise? I could not conjecture. Should I have gained more had I better understood their language? I have _much reason_ to doubt. That they have a moral law of some extent ‘written in the heart,’ I could not doubt, as numerous traits of their conduct show, but beyond this, I could satisfy myself of nothing; nor did these efforts, and many more, enable me to conjecture aught worth recording. Respecting their opinions on the essential points from which I might have presumed on a religion, I was obliged at present to abandon the attempt, and I was inclined to despair.”[183]