Circumcision, between the fourth and eighth year, is universal in Pongo-land, and without it a youth could not be married.  The operation is performed generally by the chief, often by some old man, who receives a fee from the parents:  the thumb nails are long, and are used after the Jewish fashion:[FN#10] neat rum with red pepper is spirted from the mouth to “kill wound.”  It is purely hygienic, and not balanced by the excisio Judaica, Some physiologists consider the latter a necessary complement of the male rite; such, however, is not the case.  The Hebrews, who almost everywhere retained circumcision, have, in Europe at least, long abandoned excision.  I regret that the delicacy of the age does not allow me to be more explicit.

The Mpongwe practise a rite so resembling infant baptism that the missionaries have derived it from a corruption of Abyssinian Christianity which, like the flora of the Camarones and Fernandian Highlands, might have travelled across the Dark Continent, where it has now been superseded by El Islam.  I purpose at some period of more leisure to prove an ancient intercourse and rapprochement of all the African tribes ranging between the parallels of north latitude 20deg. and south latitude 30deg..  It will best be established, not by the single great family of language, but by the similarity of manners, customs, and belief; of arts and crafts; of utensils and industry.  The baptism of Pongo-land is as follows.  When the babe is born, a crier, announcing the event, promises to it in the people’s name participation in the rights of the living.  It is placed upon a banana leaf, for which reason the plantain is never used to stop the water-pots; and the chief or the nearest of kin sprinkles it from a basin, gives it a name, and pronounces a benediction, his example being followed by all present.  The man-child is exhorted to be truthful, and the girl to “tell plenty lie,” in order to lead a happy life.  Truly a new form of the regenerative rite!

A curious prepossession of the African mind, curious and yet general, in a land where population is the one want, and where issue is held the greatest blessing, is the imaginary necessity of limiting the family.  Perhaps this form of infanticide is a policy derived from ancestors who found it necessary.  In the kingdom of Apollonia (Guinea) the tenth child was always buried alive; never a Decimus was allowed to stand in the way of the nine seniors.  The birth of twins is an evil portent to the Mpongwes, as it is in many parts of Central Africa, and even in the New World; it also involves the idea of moral turpitude, as if the woman were one of the lower animals, capable of superfetation.  There is no greater insult to a man, than to point at him with two fingers, meaning that he is a twin; of course he is not one, or he would have been killed at birth.  Albinos are allowed to live, as in Dahome, in Ashanti, and among some East African tribes, where I have been “chaffed” about a brother white, who proved to be an exceptional negro without pigmentum nigrum.