BOOK NOTICE.
Ethiopia, or Twenty Years of Missionary Life in Western Africa. By Rev. D. K. Flickinger.
As indicated in the title, the author of this modest volume has had long experience as a missionary of the United Brethren to Africa. Their mission station is near our own, and its story sheds light on our work. With no pretension to literary or artistic merit, a very simple and vivid description is given of the people of the north-western coast, their homes, their houses, their food, their dress (or lack of it), their sleep, their work, their war, their play. The grossness of their polygamy, the superstition of their faith in gree-grees, and their Purrow society (an Oriental Ku Klux Klan) are exposed.
We extract the account of the legend current among the Mendi tribe, as to the order of the creation of the races, and their explanation of their differences. The story runs thus:
“God made white man early in the morning, and take plenty time to show him book palaver [how to read], and God palaver Over against this we quote an old negro’s prayer: “O God, you must remember me. You must make my heart clean; make me no hate nobody; you made me; all my mind then to you. Please God, you must show me how for pray, because I don’t know how.”THE FREEDMEN.