The climate in fact not only discourages but prohibits mental effort of severe or sustained character, and the negroes have submitted to that prohibition as to many others, through countless generations, with excellent grace.

So accustomed were they to interdicts of nature that they added many of their own through conventional taboo, some of them intended to prevent the eating of supposedly injurious food, others calculated to keep the commonalty from infringing upon the preserves of the dignitaries.[2] [Footnote 2: A convenient sketch of the primitive African regime is J.A.
Tillinghast's _The Negro in Africa and America_, part I.A fuller survey is Jerome Dowd's _The Negro Races_, which contains a bibliography of the sources.

Among the writings of travelers and sojourners particularly notable are Mary Kingsley's _Travels in West Africa_ as a vivid picture of coast life, and her _West African Studies_ for its elaborate and convincing discussion of fetish, and the works of Sir A.B.Ellis on the Tshi-, Ewe- and Yoruba-speaking peoples for their analyses of institutions along the Gold Coast.] No people is without its philosophy and religion.

To the Africans the forces of nature were often injurious and always impressive.

To invest them with spirits disposed to do evil but capable of being placated was perhaps an obvious recourse; and this investiture grew into an elaborate system of superstition.