while we sleep. Some 'scientific theory' must accordingly be invented, and is not long lacking; but that which attributed all the virtues to a so-called race whose most nearly pure representatives are about the dullest, least creative and interesting folk on earth, and whose record is merely nugatory, is becoming a menace to mankind.

As regards the so-called Mediterranean race, which, with a religion of Oriental origin, has made the modern world, let me attempt the modest but useful task of indicating some of the theories which are credited. My present concern being especially the Italian, let me first briefly mention the Greek and Spanish. The Greeks, according to some, were destroyed by the introduction of malaria; and if the modern Greek is looked down upon in the United States as when the visitor is advised to patronize a 'white' lunch counter rather than one run by Greeks

the reply to the natural allusion to Pericles and Socrates may be that, as shown by anthropological measurements, the modern Greek does not belong to the ancient race at all, for that has vanished. We are also told that, in racial composition, the Ancient Greeks were practically identical with the present population of England - the so-called Anglo-Saxons. It seems quite the most wildly incredible nonsense one ever heard - but the anthropologists ought to know. That the present Spaniard belongs to the same race as his great ancestors is not questioned, but here some invoke, for what surely must be called decadence, the action of reversed selection, as argued by my master, Francis Galton, in his Hereditary Genius (1869) — religious celibacy

and the Inquisition being the guilty agents.

But as regards the Italians. Before we submit theories of their decadence, are we sure of the fact we seek to explain? The American evidence about Southern Italians may be valid, but I suspect all these statistics when it is notorious that political interests are involved. If failure to reproduce be called a sign of decadence, as perhaps in the case of the French, certainly the Italians of to-day exhibit no such sign, for they multiply at a great rate. Here it would not be proper to do more than note that, according to some, the dominant form of Christianity in Southern Europe blights the people and arrests progress, quite apart from any biological factors; but that is an instance of the appalling complexity of this whole problem of human decadence. We cannot confidently call contemporary Italians degenerate because they do not regularly produce Galileos and Michelangelos. We ourselves have had only one Shakespeare. More and more, in considering this problem, I am constrained to admit that we biological writers have too often failed to recognize the importance of the nonbiological factors of what we call decadence. A new industry is invented in a young city, or the course of a river is altered, and the famous old city loses its wealth or its port and thereafter its history becomes mean; but this is not to say that the people are biologically degraded. I have not the faintest idea whether or not the Florentines of to-day are biologically inferior to those of the early Renaissance and the Cinquecento, and my belief is that all the world is as completely ignorant on this subject as I am.

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FROM the time we left Kandi to the end of our journey we seldom passed a village, no matter how small, where we did not find school children awaiting our arrival, in charge of the good Fathers of the Lyon African Missions. Both Catholic and Protestant missionaries the former in particular very numerous in Dahomey. But except in the seaports, where European influence is dominant, Christianity makes extremely slow progress. Fetishism puts up an obstinate resistance. It long since passed beyond the stage of barbarous idolatry, such as the forest tribes practise, and has become an animist religion with relatively elaborated doctrines. It maintains itself by the magic, trickery, and cruelty of its priests, and keeps its adepts in an atmosphere of terror terror of their environment, terror of the supernatural and unexpected, terror of obscure divinities who constantly communicate with mankind through the fetishes.

of the highest commands of Christianity, such as those of charity and mercy, find no echo in the bosom of the blacks, except along the narrow line of contact where European and native cultures come into conflict and produce an uprooted and disinherited class.

Nothing discourages these missionaries, not even that most distressing of all their problems, that of premature conversion - the danger of destroying deep-seated beliefs without an assurance of substituting others for them, the necessity of holding back in a sense from their most distinctively religious labor. The term of service of these devoted men is not limited to two years, as it is for army officers and officials. They come for life-a life usually shortened by the climate. Complete masters of the language, the customs, the tribal peculiarities of the people amid whom they dwell, and incomparable observers of their ways, they almost invariably possess the confidence and the respect of the natives.

From missionary schools, both Catholic and Protestant, come the akoues, or educated clerks, interpreters, railway employees, and minor officials who perform so many of the humble but indispensable administrative duties in the colony.

to Savé. We were now following a comparatively civilized, shaded highway through the jungle. As the humidity increased, the vegetation grew more luxuriant. We began to see great lianas falling in cascades of verdure from the trees - first messengers of the great forest-belt that we were about to enter. After crossing its frontiers we should see no more birds, no more animals, and hear no sound of life except from the tree-summits two hundred or three hundred feet above us. Close to the ground nothing would be visible except massive serried trunks rising like the columns of a vast temple to an impenetrable vault of interlaced branches high above. Life in this region concentrates in the clearings, where in sun-flooded savannas those oases of the forest - the wild elephant, the antelope, the leopard, and the savage dwell.

But the country close to our route was densely populated. We passed porters all along the way-huge blacks, their faces deeply scarred with the identification marks that Africans from time immemorial have branded on the faces of their children in order that they might recognize them again if separated by slavery or war. These carriers were naked except for a narrow waistcloth, and all of them, whether men or women, carried a pipe in their mouths and a pack upon their heads.

These Dahomans are not invariably cannibals in the strict sense of the word - that is, they do not hunt men for meat upon which to live, the way certain tribes of Gabon still do, or in order to vary their diet. But they continue to practise ritual cannibalism. They sacrifice a captive to the spirits of their ancestors; they drink the blood of an enemy in order to acquire his warlike valor; they often eat their aged parents out of filial piety. These human sacrifices are made with great

secrecy and in remote places, at stated times during traditional festivals or at the special order of the fetish-priests. No white person is ever eaten, and the victims vanish without the fact coming to the knowledge of the authorities.

Our automobiles made their last halt before reaching Savé at a little cluster of huts in the deep shadow of a gigantic ceiba-tree. The occupants gathered in a compact group and regarded us with a mournful, frightened expression. Having a few moments at my disposal, I entered the village proper, followed by a pack of pot-bellied youngsters. Within the palisade I discovered a few withered old women, who had not come out at the sound of our motors but had remained behind, crouched over their calabashes. Two men were eating like big monkeys, throwing into their open mouths greasy pieces of food which they fished out of a stewing mess with their hands.

I had time barely for a glance before, at the cry 'All aboard,' I scampered back to our car. We resumed our journey, and precisely at noon reached Savé.

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So here we were again at a railhead. The great journey was finished, for from now on we should travel by rail like ordinary tourists. Through the forest-belt ahead there were no highways that would admit the passage our cars. For the first time in history a connection had been made between the railways of Algiers and the railways of Dahomey eighteen days by automobile, 3600 kilometres across the great Sahara, with its rocks, its sands, its Tanezruft, then through the Sudan bush, then along the banks of the Niger, and finally into the heart of Dahomey. Not a breakdown, not an accident. Tout a marché gaiement, à la française.

When we arose next morning we bade adieu to the soldiers and chauffeurs who had been our loyal assistants

and companions on our journey. We warmly shook each other's hands with a touch of that sadness one always feels in bidding farewell to those with whom one has shared perils and privations. I cast a last look on our three automobiles. They stood in a line, travel-worn, and, I must confess, looking a bit cocky with their hoods jauntily thrown back for the inspection of their motors.

Our special train consisted of a firstclass car and the company's wagon de luxe. 'Wagon de luxe' sounds well, but I hope I may say without offense that 'bird-cage,' or 'hencoop' would have been more accurately descriptive. But we appreciated the change, nevertheless-especially the electric fans that slightly freshened the air.

The manager of the line had concentrated the preparations for our reception at a single point in our itinerary, Dassa-Zoume. Here all the fetish-men and fetish-women of the principal neighboring tribes were assembled to do honor to the Marshal. We had scarcely reached the station when we found ourselves surrounded by three hundred fetish-women performing their ritual dances in the midst of a riotous din of shouts, chants, cheers, and beating tom-toms.

Forming a procession, we first paid our respects to the assembled chiefs. One of them, Zoumalon, King of the Dassas, was an old, blind octogenarian who enjoyed great authority among his people, and has always been a loyal friend of France. He was reclining on a mat surrounded by his ministers, his favorite wives, his slaves, and his big wooden horse mounted on wheels. The history of this horse is rather funny. Zoumalon was jealous of the cavalry of the neighboring chiefs, and vainly tried to introduce horses at Dassa. But all the conjurations and the remedies of his fetish-men were powerless against the tsetse fly. So the French authorities

sent him a fine hobbyhorse from Paris, which when he was younger he always mounted on state occasions. Now in his old age he merely has it by his side.

After this little formality of courtesy, we proceeded to the point where the fetish-women were gathered in great circles. The first of these was formed by the Niesson - what we might call with some flattery the priestesses of Aphrodite. As soon as we drew near they commenced an extraordinary dance indescribable here. The next group consisted of the priestesses of the lion. As we approached them they threw themselves simultaneously on the ground, mimicking in rhythmic, grotesque postures the slinking of the king of beasts through the jungle. Their tom-toms were beaten with a deep roaring sound, while they emitted hoarse growls, meantime supporting themselves on their knees and springing to the right and left with their arms held stiffly before them like the forelegs of a charging lion.

A smaller group, not more than thirty, consisted of the fetish-women of smallpox - Sakpata. Several had their faces masked to represent the faces of smallpox victims, and they were not accompanied by tom-toms. The priestesses and high priests of Sakpata form a redoubtable caste which the native chiefs have sought without success to suppress. They have handed down for generations a terrible secret. As soon as they recognize a case of smallpox, they rub the eruption with a special rod provided with rugosities, in accordance with a certain ritual. The effect is to transfer the contagion to the rod. Then, whenever they wish to work vengeance or to prove their power, they select a victim whom under some pretext they touch with the rod and infect with the disease. Several Dahomey kings have forbidden the public practice of the cult and have tried to

suppress its priestesses. The French authorities have vainly endeavored to do the same. But the fact that vaccine, when brought to this country, soon loses its efficacy has so far prevented the complete abolition of the order.

The largest circle of dancers consisted of the fetish-women of the lightning - Hebyoso. These women take possession of the corpses of people killed by lightning and make their bones into charms that are supposed to protect the wearer against this dreaded form of death. Their cult is one of the most widely spread and elaborate in Dahomey. Hebyoso is a fetish that manifests itself in several personalities: Gbade-So, the Father who kills men; Sogbo, the Mother who scolds in Heaven; her Son who rends trees; Djakata-So, the god who burns houses; and various others, each corresponding to one of the effects of lightning, and each having his particular rites. These priestesses received us with shouts and movements of their arms, mimicking the sound of thunder and the zigzag of a lightning flash.

A large group of young people of both sexes stood on one side watching the spectacle with a calm and a silence in striking contrast with the noise and excitement of the other natives present. An interpreter explained to me that they were the Voodoonon, or College of Voodoo Priestesses accompanied and guarded by fetish-officials. I learned with much interest the formalities of initiation into these different cults. Young boys and girls selected by the high fetish-priests for the priesthood are taken from their families at a very early age and interned in a sort of monastic establishment near some temple, where they remain at least three or four moons. Those who are selected for highest rank spend several years in these institutions. The neophyte completely forgets his mother tongue, which

he is not permitted again to speak. He learns the tongue of the priests, which they alone know. He goes through a long process of progressive tattooing and is trained in the rites and mysteries of the cult. Later he is returned to his family and becomes a full-fledged practitioner.

The swing, the cadence, and the measure of these dances are difficult to describe. The fetish-priestesses marched one behind the other in a circle around the fetish-priests and musicians. All were clad in their best. Most of them had circlets of bangles and multicolored beads around their heads, metal bands and necklaces around their necks, and bracelets upon their arms and ankles. Their busts were bare; they wore waistcloths or short skirts from which hung festoons of bright-colored ribbons. At every movement their ornaments tinkled and jangled in time with the tambourines, the bells, the serpent-skin guitars, and the gourd rattles that they carried in their hands. Their movements were tremely rapid. Each dancer advanced with long elastic steps, lifting her knees as high as she could, stretching her forearms and fingers now in front now behind with an undulating movement until her long thin arms were extended at length. Simultaneously the elbows were swung in and out as if the dancer were trying to mimic the beating wings of a bat. The perspiring faces of the participants remained serious, sometimes with an exalted expression bordering upon ecstasy. Little by little a sort of rhapsody, frenzy, seized everyone, and priests and dancers quickened their rhythm until it reached a mad climax.

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Was it a spectacle to laugh at? Not at all. Eventually the savage fascination of this exuberant motion grips the spectator. He becomes aware of a subtle meaning, of a naïve art and inven