LAW AND RELIGION IN WHYDAH.

Bruce Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 2180, 4 July 1890, Page 6

LAW AND RELIGION IN WHYDAH.

With regard to the principal offences against the laws of the land, and the modes of punishing them, Bosman declares that there were very few capital crimes, only those of murder and adultery with one of the king's or his chief captains' wives. At a date when Europe was still hanging for sheep-stealing, this no doubt seemed a very lenient criminal code. But the actual infliction of the penalty was rare in Fida ; the natives, owing to their fear of death, being careful u nofc to lay themselves open to it. Lighter offences were determined by ordeals of varying character and efficiency. One of thes9 was to throw the accused into a certain river, which was credited with the wonderful property of drovraing all gailty persons, while the innocent escaped unhurt, supposing they were able to save themselves by swimming. " But all of them being very expert in this," remarks the sagacious chronicler, " I never heard that this river ever yet convicted any person, for they all came well out, pajing a certain sum to the King, for which end alone I believe this trial to be designed."

THE RELIGIOUS BELIEFS of the Fidasians open 3 a much larger field for inquiry and speculation than their civil institutions. The number of deities possessed by them seems to have been beyond all reckoning. Bosman asked one of the chief natives, who was a very intelligent man, how many gods his people acknowledged. The chief laughed, and said that in truth the white man had puzzled him, for no one in the whole country could give an exact account of them. " For my part," he confessed with a ready candour, " I have a very large number of god?, and doubt not that others have aa many." He explained that when starting on an expedition or undertaking, it was their custom to make a god of the first thing they saw, whether a dumb animal such as a pig, sheep, or dog, or an inanimate object like a tree or atone. When they return at the conclusion of the enterprise, if successful, they would give offerings to this deity ; if unsuccessful, they deposed it from the pedestal of their veneration, and thought no more about it. Apart, however, from the numerous deities created in this manner, there were TIIEEE CLASSES OP GODS which received universal homage. They were snakes, trees, and the sea. Of these, snakes were by far the most important, and temples, or snake-houses, were erected to them ail over the country, while an order of priests was devoted solely to their service. Every species of snake was not included in this worship, the venomous ones being the exception, contrary to what one would

expect from the superstitious cast of unreasoning and primitive intelligence, usually more apt to pay homage to a god that could work harm than to one that had no such power. But there may have been a grain of shrewd common sense underlying this distinction, which would allow the venomous snakes, as not being sacred, to be destroyed, and thus remove a really dangerous enemy. — From " A Slave-dealer of 1690," in the Cornhill Magazine.