thought should master these works thoroughly, and I fully grant their great importance; but, nevertheless, I am quite unable to agree with Mr. Jevons (Introduction to the History of Religion, p. 164) when he says, regarding Fetishism, that "it is certainly amongst the inhabitants of the Gold and Slave Coasts that the subject can best be studied." These two Coasts are, I grant, the best place for a student who is resident in Europe, and therefore dependent on the accounts given by others of the things he is dealing with, to draw his information from, because of the accuracy and extent of the information he can get from Ellis's work; but, apart from Ellis the value of these regions to an ethnologist is but small, and for an ethnologist who will go out to West Africa and study his material for himself, the whole of the Coast regions of the Benin Bight are but of tenth-rate importance, because of the great and long-continued infusion of both Mohammedan and European forms of thought into the original native thought-form that has taken place in these regions. This subject I will refer to later, and I will return now to the history, confining myself to the earlier portions of it, and to that which bears on the early development of trade.
I sincerely wish I could go into full details regarding the whole history of the locality here, because I know my only chance of being allowed to do so is on paper, and it would be a great relief to my mind; but I forbear, experience having taught me that the subject, to put it mildly, is not of general interest. For example, person after person have I tried to illuminate and educate in the matter of our relationships with the Ashantees; always, alas, in vain. Before I have got
