I have much curious information regarding its flora
and fauna. A great deal of both is seemingly
indigenous, and then there are the souls of great
human beings, the Asrahmanfw, and the souls of all
the human beings, animals, and things sent down with
them. The ghosts do not seem to leave off their
interest in mundane affairs, for they not only have
local palavers, but try palavers left over from their
earthly existence; and when there is an outbreak of
sickness in a Fantee town or village, and several inhabitants
die off, the opinion is often held that there is a
big palaver going on down in Srahmandazi and that
the spirits are sending up on earth for witnesses,
subpoenaing them as it were. Medicine men or
priests are called in to find out what particular
earthly grievance can be the subject of the ghost
palaver, and when they have ascertained this, they
take the evidence of every one in the town on this
affair, as it were on commission, and transmit the
information to the court sitting in Srahmandazi.
This prevents the living being incommoded by personal
journeys down below, and although the priests have
their fee, it is cheaper in the end, because the witnesses’
funeral expenses would fall heavier still.
Although far more elaborated and thought out than
any other African underworld I have ever come across,
the Tschwi Srahmandazi may be taken as a type of all
the African underworlds. The Bantu’s idea
of a future life is a life spent in much such a place.
As far as I can make out there is no definite idea
of eternity. I have even come across cases in
which doubt was thrown on the present existence of
the Creating God, but I think this has arisen from
attempts having been made to introduce concise conceptions
into the African mind, conceptions that are quite
foreign to its true nature and which alarm and worry
it. You never get the strange idea of the difference
between time and eternity—the idea I mean,
that they are different things—in the African
that one frequently gets in cultured Europeans; and
as for the human soul, the African always believes
“that still the spirit is whole, and life and
death but shadows of the soul.”
CHAPTER XVI. FETISH—(concluded).
In which the discourse on apparitions is continued,
with some observations on secret societies, both tribal
and murder, and the kindred subject of leopards.
Apparitions are by no means always of human soul origin.
All the Tschwi and the Ewe gods, for example, have
the habit of appearing pretty regularly to their priests,
and occasionally to the laity, like Sasabonsum; but
it is only to priests that these appearances are harmless
or beneficial. The effect of Sasabonsum’s
appearance to the layman I have cited above, and I
could give many other examples of the bad effects
of those of other gods, but will only now mention
Tando, the Hater, the chief god of the Northern Tschwi,
