and that is that Voudou requires for the celebration of its rites a priestess and a priest. Obeah can be worked by either alone, and is not tied to the presence of the snake. Both these cults have sprung from slaves imported from Ellis's district, Obeah from slaves bought at Koromantin mainly, and Voudou from those bought at Dahomey. Nevertheless, it seems to me these good people have differentiated their religion in the West Indies considerably; for example, in Obeah the spider (anansi) has a position given it equal to that of the snake in Voudou. Now the spider is all very well in West Africa; round him there has grown a series of most amusing stories, always to be told through the nose, and while you crawl about; but to put him on a plane with the snake in Dahomey is absurd; his equivalent there is the turtle, also a focus for many tales, only more improper tales, and not half so amusing.
The true importance and status of the snake in Dahomey is a thing hard to fix. Personally I believe it to be merely a case of especial development of a local ju-ju. We all know what the snake signifies, and instances of its attaining a local eminence occur elsewhere. At Creek Town, in Calabar, and Brass River it is more than respected. It is an accidental result of some bit of history we have lost, like the worship of the crocodile at Dixcove and in the Lower Congo. Whereas it is clear that the general respect, amounting to seeming worship, of the leopard is another affair altogether, for the leopard is the great thing in all West African forests, and forests and surf are the great things in Western Africa—the lines of perpetual danger to the life of man.
But there is a remarkable point that you cannot fail to notice in the Fetish of these three divisions of true Negro
