What a fragrance there is in the pic was hideous nightmare does the opium- in the writings of such different meu eater conjure up images dishonoring as De Quincey and Southey, Charles to God and purity. Take a little sen- Lamb and Hartley Coleridge, is no tence, for instance, out of one of the fictitious sentiment assumed for the dreams which he has himself recorded: purposes of art. It had been put to a I thought it was a Sunday morning in severe practical test which many genuMay, that it was Easter Sunday, and yet ine lovers of children might not have very early in the morning. . . I said withstood. The necessities of small aloud (as I thought) to myself: "It yet households and straitened means had wants much of sunrise, and it is Easter brought them into close and daily conSunday, and that is the day on which they tact with the nursery. Southey wrote celebrate the first-fruits of the Resurrection. his history of Portugal keeping watch I will walk abroad, old griefs shall be for- at the same time over the baby seated gotten; for the air is cool and still, and the in her chair at his side. De Quincey, hills are high, and stretch away to heaven at an age when young men take little and the forest-glades are as quiet as the notice of children, was the favorite churchyard; and with the dew I can wash the fever from my brow, and then I shall companion of the little Wordsworths, be unhappy no longer. and when little Kate died his grief passed all the limits of ordinary mournture, an innocent fragrance as of dewy ing. In after years his love for his deferential in its expression own children-gentle, diffident, almost joined to a feminine and tender regard for their needs and pleasures. At any moment he would break off from his writing at the cry of a child up-stairs, and carry it down to sit in his armchair and be comforted. Nor was such tenderness merely parental. Like Wordsworth's love for nature, it was part of his religion; and it was joined to that love for the weak and helpless which is a characteristic note of the Christian creed. It is one of the most lovable traits in these men of letters. It inspired some of their most felicitous writings; it irradiated even the black abyss in which De Quincey was SO often plunged; it constituted the deep, though in later years, after death had visited it, the trembling happiness of Southey's home; and it made Charles Lamb in his old age once more the playfellow of his "dream children." lawns and early blossoms, but hardly powerful enough, we might have feared, to overpower the noxious fumes of his drugged imagination! It reminds one of Charles Lamb's own description of an empty village church: Wouldst thou know the beauty of holiness? Go alone on some week day, borrowing the keys of good Master Sexton, traverse the cool aisles of some country church, think of the piety that has kneeled there; the congregations, old and young, that have found consolation there; the meek pastor, the docile parishioner. With no disturbing emotions, no cross conflicting comparisons, drink in the tranquillity of the place till thou thyself become as fixed and motionless as the marble effigies that kneel and weep around thee. It is very remarkable, we think, to see what a strong hold such tranquil scenes and memories had upon the literary men of this period. "Eccovi! look at him," cried Carlyle, when he saw De Quincey; "this child has been in hell." And he was right; nevertheless the ghastly experiences which he had gained there had not obliterated the peaceful images still treasured in the recesses of his bewildered brain; nor had the horrors of physical and mental disease banished the pure emotions and sympathies which such memories evoked. And the reverence for innocence and infancy which breathes Childhood was an Eden to which in fancy they wandered back, and to which the fruits of the tree of knowledge had brought no enchantment. It was with the same sympathetic and serious and tranquil spirit that they regarded existing religious systems, and the doctrines upon which they were founded. They may ponder and discuss a question, but there is no feverish restlessness in the inquiry. De Quincey Wordsworth, at the instance of Charles Lamb's friends, wrote his epitaph. As he originally wrote it the first line was, To the dear memory of a frail good man. The more foolish of Lamb's friends objected to the word "frail," and it was rewritten without that word-the only word in it which was individualizing. lived in a mystery which he had no desire to solve; as his biographer affirms he went through the world "wrapt in a general religious wonder." He looked upon Christianity as the one divine revelation, and no Biblical criticism had power to trouble his faith. "The Bible," he says, putting aside all scientific objections "the Bible must At this distance of time we are wiser. not teach anything that man can teach We no longer fear to dishonor the dead himself." Southey, slowly but surely by the remembrance of human weakworking his way onwards from the ness, but are well content to leave them Unitarianism of his youth, has, as IIaz- to that merciful judgment which, relitt said, "missed his way in Utopia versing so many earthly verdicts, has and found it in Old Sarum." Charles lifted them Lamb touches upon such matters in a lighter vein; even when he venerates an idea he has a natural disregard for its outward forms and symbols, yet he has no desire to controvert or disturb existing beliefs. Credulity," he says, Above the world and sped the passing life From Macmillan's Magazine. THE FETISH-MOUNTAIN OF KROBO. THE sun had just disappeared behind the fringe of fan-palms on the horizon, and the afterglow was throwing a crim son light over the placid waters of one of the broad lagoons which skirt the seaboard of the West African Gold Coast. I had been travelling for some hours in a long, narrow Adangbe canoe, and was very tired of being cooped up in the cranky craft. The village which 66 is a man's weakness but a child's strength," and he is quite ready to extend to it that affectionate toleration which he has for childish things. But the great realities of life and death, and love beyond the grave, are more and more to him as the world grows emptier, and friends never to be replaced are taken from him. "Coleridge is dead," he would say irrelevantly in the midst of conversation, as if the cry of his heart must make itself heard be- had decided to sleep in was still miles fore he could go on to speak of other away on the opposite side of the broad, things. The calamities he had suffered shallow stretch of water; and yet, haunted and oppressed his solitary though tired, hungry, and cramped, hours. In the "surfeit of time" of there was a restful sensation of calm which he speaks at Enfield, he is some- enveloping the scene which reconciled times "serious to sinking almost; me in some degree to this tedious mode and though he rises buoyant, by the of travelling. sweetness of his nature and the energy of his spirit, above the troublesome waters, there is ever a pathos underlying his merriest moods and his wittiest sayings, born of the tragic cloud which hung over his dearest affections and his home. To the last his wandering thoughts found a resting-place in the eternal verities; and he who so unaffectedly loved his sister whom he had seen, has found, we may humbly trust, the Giver and Object of all love. In the fly-leaf of his copy of Lamb's "Life and Letters" there is a note in Sir Henry Taylor's handwriting. The short tropical twilight was fast fading into darkness, and the bright blue sky toning down into the deepest azure, out of whose depths peered the pale light of the glimmering stars. The placid waste of waters was only gently ruffled now and then by the ugly black! snout of some sleepy alligator, slowly rising to the surface for a breath of the cool evening breeze. As I lazily lolled in one end of the canoe, I could not help admiring the fine proportions of the stalwart native who was standing in the stern, slowly propelling the uncouth craft on its slug gish way. His clean-shaped muscular | his interminable song seemed all to limbs stood out in clear black silhouette have suddenly fled, leaving nought beagainst the colors of the sunset, as he hind but an uncouth, unintelligible leisurely laid his weight on the long, jargon. The soft twilight was now straight pole, or drew it gently out of almost at an end, and a cold, damp the muddy bottom. He eased his labors breeze was creeping over the sluggish by softly singing a low rhythmical waters, hinting at miasma and all sorts chant, which blended delightfully with of malarial horrors. All the poetry of the calm repose of the scene. Like all the scene had vanished. I felt cross African music it was in a decidedly and tired and hungry, and roughly orminor key, and the quaint rhythm of dered my boy to tell the man to stop the Adangbe words rose and fell in a his ugly noise and to pole as if he gentle cadence, which at that moment intended to put me ashore sometime seemed to me the perfection of poetry. before the sun rose again. The cold, The song was undeniably long, how- unhealthy dews of the African night ever, and presently I fell to wondering were now falling like a cloud, and a what its subject could be. Was it an white mist of vapor gently rising from epic by some poet of his tribe, telling the almost stagnant waters, making me of mighty deeds in the chase, and of long to be safe on land and sheltered heroic fights with hereditary enemies? from these poisonous exhalations, even No, - that gentle, plaintive air would in the stuffy native hut which I exsurely better fit some tender love-chant, pected to find on landing. and the man was probably singing the charms of some far away dusky beauty, whose soft black eyes had set his heart aflame. "He At length I arrived at my destination, a small crowded village of mud huts, and there I found the two other white men who were to go with me on the morrow to pay a visit to the FetishMountain of Krobo. After a night's struggle with Brobdingnagian mosquitoes and other abominations, we made an early start, and by seven o'clock our procession of hammocks, bearers, and carriers was wending its serpentine way through the narrow bush-track which led to our My curiosity was aroused; I would find out the theme of his song from my black boy, who was sprawling on some packages in the bottom of the canoe. “Sam, you savez that man language?" "Yessah!" "Well, what he singing about?" cussin, sah!" "What!" I exclaimed. "Yessah! he da cuss too bad. He be one Popo man, sah, and he say that one Kokofoo destination. Hammock-travelling has man make some bad palaver wid him, so he da cuss him." "Do you mean he is calling him names?" "Yessah! He cussing de man fader, an' de man moder, and he grandfader, and he grandmoder, and all he moder and fader before him, back, back, back, long time. He cuss plenty, massa !" an undeniably luxurious smack about it; but unfortunately there the luxury begins and ends. To the uninitiated, who have never been forced to use this form of locomotion, it may suggest ideas of silken cushions, of embroidered baldaquins, of waving ostrichfeather fans, and of gorgeous fly-brushes Alas, how was my poetic image cast gently waved by graceful, if dusky, down! So that soft rhythmic chant slaves. The reality, however, is prowas nothing but a long string of curses, saic enough; and the idea of hammockand what I had taken to be the amorous travelling suggests to the unhappy outpourings of an untutored poetic na- official or trader of the Gold Coast, who ture was, on the contrary, a collection has been forced to make weary jourof atrocious expressions which would neys in this manner, visions of hard probably cause even a Billingsgate fish-canvas, unlimited shaking and jolting, fag to turn pale with envy. dust and flies, besides a dozen other The discovery caused an unpleasant discomforts inseparable from a therrevulsion of feeling. The melody of mometer standing ninety degrees in the VOL. LXXXIII. 4298 LIVING AGE. however, where horses seldom thrive, hammocks are indispensable, and supply the only means of making journeys of any length. shade. On the West Coast of Africa, | spreading away to the north, where the horizon is bounded by the distant range of the Akwapim Hills. In the middle of the plain rises the Fetish-Mountain. standing out like an island in a sea of freshest green. In shape and size much resembling the rock of Gibraltar, it forms a conspicuous landmark for many miles around. The Gold Coast, as every one knows, is a British possession on the seaboard of the Gulf of Guinea, and labors under a reputation for extreme unhealthiness, which in many cases is not wholly Although still three or four miles deserved. Liberal allowance as regards away we could distinguish faint sounds pay and leave of absence induce a good of an almost incessant discharge of many young men to enter the service musketry, while clouds of smoke curled of the colony, and they, together with in the still air around the sides of the a certain number of traders and mis-mountain. Passing through a village sionaries, form the only civilized popu- our party was reinforced by three more lation of the extensive country over which a Protectorate has been declared. To those interested in folk-lore and ethnography the Gold Coast offers a grand field for investigation, the inhabitants having remained for the most part in the same condition of primitive simplicity in which they were found by the first European visitors to the coast four or five centuries ago. Despite a tolerable supply of missionaries of all denominations, Fetishism flourishes almost as vigorously as ever; and if its horrible rites have been rigorously suppressed in those territories which recognize British authority, there are still numbers of curious customs and with their powder in small gourds atceremonies practised which are ex-tached to their waists, while the women tremely interesting as illustrating the peculiar ideas of the people. I was particularly anxious to visit the Krobo mountain, having been told that it was at certain times of the year the scene of many curious customs which might be well worth observing. One of the most interesting of all, the Otufo, ΟΙ Tail-girl" custom, was about to be celebrated, and I was on my way to the Krobo hill at the opening of this paper. This hill is about sixty miles from the seacoast, and a little to the westward of the Volta River which flows northward right through the Protectorate. white men, consisting of the commissioner of the district and two other officials who were making a tour of inspection in that part of the Protectorate. We now formed quite an imposing procession, and the string of six hammocks, with their bearers, carriers, and other attendants, stretched over quite a long distance of path. The vil lages on all sides were almost deserted, as nearly the whole population of the district had congregated on the FetishMountain. Now and again we met small parties of natives, evidently on their way to the scene; all the men carrying long, rusty, flint-lock guns, marched along behind, carrying on their heads huge black pots full of palm-wine. It was evidently a general holiday, and all were decked in their brightest cloths and beads. A curious and not unpleasant chant, in a very minor key, was lustily kept up by these people as they marched, and the same strange refrain could be heard on all sides echoing in the distance, until the tune rang in our ears with annoying persistence. On commencing the ascent of the mountain our path for the first mile or so rose in a leisurely zigzag fashion; After two or three hours' travelling but soon hammocks were no longer we left the thick undergrowth of bush, practicable, and despite the great heat through which we had been going, and every man had to get out and walk. emerged on the Krobo plain, a fine The side of the mountain which we undulating stretch of prairie, covered were ascending was almost bare of with short, fresh, green grass and vegetation, save where a low under in times of danger. It is the great cemetery and burial-ground for the whole tribe; and at certain seasons of the year the entire population of the Krobo country resorts to it for the celebration of certain Fetish customs and ceremonies. growth of scrub hedged in the path, by them as the heart and centre of without affording the slightest shelter their territory, and a place of refuge from the perpendicular rays of the sun. In many places the track was nothing more than a narrow ledge or fissure on the face of precipitous cliffs, and at short intervals huge boulders of ironstone could be seen poised on the very edges of the precipices, ready to be hurled by a very slight effort upon any The mountain, however, is far from body of assailants who might be rash being usually deserted; on the conenough to attempt to force a passage trary, it possesses a more peculiar and up the mountain. These immense strange population than is perhaps to masses of stone had probably been be found in any other part of the gradually dislodged from their softer globe. surrounding, and were so undermined that it looked as if a push from the hand of a child could send the mighty masses crashing down the mountainsides like some terrible avalanche. It is very generally believed that African tribes possess but a scanty amount of respect for the usual forms of morality. This is a mistake. A comparison between the average moral behavior of a central African tribe with that of the inhabitants of civilized lands would be, I think, to the credit of the savages. Wives are bought, it is true, but probably the very idea of property causes the marriage-tie to be less frequently abused than among more civilized races. In those parts of Africa which are under European rule and law adultery is anything but rare, because the natives About two centuries ago the ancestors of the present tribe of Kroboes were driven, for some reason or other, from their own country further south. On arriving in the neighborhood of the mountain they overcame the original inhabitants and at once settled themselves on the hill. Finding themselves in possession of a natural fortress of the strongest description, they were enabled to set at defiance the surrounding tribes and from their impregnable have no other remedy than to bring place of refuge made such constant raids on the natives of the plain that in a short time they imposed their rule over a large stretch of the surrounding country. At present they are supposed to number some forty thousand, and owing to their savage and warlike character are greatly feared by neighboring tribes of much greater numerical strength. They now form part of the British Protectorate, and owing to the increased security of life and property have settled themselves in large villages on the plains, where they possess enormous groves of the palms which produce the oil of commerce. They of Dutch factors, he once witnessed have divided themselves into two sec- the execution of an adulterer at Axim, tions, under two kings, one ruling over a town on the seaboard. The unhappy eastern, the other over western Krobo. man was bound and laid on the ground He of western Krobo is subordinate in the market-place, and the task of to the other, and the two dominions decapitating him was confided to a form a fairly united body. The moun- child of seven years of age, who with tain, however, is still looked upon a blunt, rusty cutlass took over an hour actions for damages in the Commissioners' Courts, where the amount awarded to the unhappy husband varies from twenty-two shillings to seven pounds, according to the tariff or value of wives belonging to certain tribes. In the interior, however, where European authority is not recognized, adultery is rarely to be purged by a mere fine. The case is tried by the native ruler, and the verdict generally results in the execution of the two culprits in the most brutal manner. Bosman, an old author on the Gold Coast, relates how, when the country was under the rule |