a certain degree.  Those spirits, which are not transmigrated, such as our dear friends or relations, they believe always attend them, and guard them from the bad spirits or their foes.  For this reason they always before eating, as I have observed, put some small portion of the meat, and pour some of their drink, on the ground for them; and they often make oblations of the blood of beasts or fowls at their graves.  I was very fond of my mother, and almost constantly with her.  When she went to make these oblations at her mother’s tomb, which was a kind of small solitary thatched house, I sometimes attended her.  There she made her libations, and spent most of the night in cries and lamentations.  I have been often extremely terrified on these occasions.  The loneliness of the place, the darkness of the night, and the ceremony of libation, naturally awful and gloomy, were heightened by my mother’s lamentations; and these, concuring with the cries of doleful birds, by which these places were frequented, gave an inexpressible terror to the scene.

We compute the year from the day on which the sun crosses the line, and on its setting that evening there is a general shout throughout the land; at least I can speak from my own knowledge throughout our vicinity.  The people at the same time make a great noise with rattles, not unlike the basket rattles used by children here, though much larger, and hold up their hands to heaven for a blessing.  It is then the greatest offerings are made; and those children whom our wise men foretel will be fortunate are then presented to different people.  I remember many used to come to see me, and I was carried about to others for that purpose.  They have many offerings, particularly at full moons; generally two at harvest before the fruits are taken out of the ground:  and when any young animals are killed, sometimes they offer up part of them as a sacrifice.  These offerings, when made by one of the heads of a family, serve for the whole.  I remember we often had them at my father’s and my uncle’s, and their families have been present.  Some of our offerings are eaten with bitter herbs.  We had a saying among us to any one of a cross temper, ’That if they were to be eaten, they should be eaten with bitter herbs.’

We practised circumcision like the Jews, and made offerings and feasts on that occasion in the same manner as they did.  Like them also, our children were named from some event, some circumstance, or fancied foreboding at the time of their birth.  I was named Olaudah, which, in our language, signifies vicissitude or fortune also, one favoured, and having a loud voice and well spoken.  I remember we never polluted the name of the object of our adoration; on the contrary, it was always mentioned with the greatest reverence; and we were totally unacquainted with swearing, and all those terms of abuse and reproach which find their way so readily and copiously into the languages of more civilized people.  The only expressions of that kind I remember were ‘May you rot, or may you swell, or may a beast take you.’