I have already mentioned the Nkalango thickets or groves, where the Anyanja bury their dead. I have entered several of these, but saw no signs of recent use—or anything to indicate the nature of the place beyond a few broken pots—except in one case. This was at Blantyre; it lay at some distance from the main road, and, so far as I could see, no path led to it. Seeing it in the distance one day, when I was out by myself, and could discover nobody in sight whose feelings might be hurt, I determined to visit it. I only reached it after a struggle through burnt grass (it was in September) which blacked me all over, and a scramble across the dried-up bed of a stream. There may have been a more convenient access, but I doubt it, and fancy that a path would be cleared when wanted. It is not the native custom to visit the graves of dead friends, though, as we have seen, this does not imply that they are forgotten; on the contrary, communications from them are expected and even hoped for. But it is not at the grave they are sought; that is an uncanny place, haunted by other presences than that of the departed; and persons found there, or seen going thither, might expose themselves to serious suspicions.

The first thing I saw gave me something of a shock. It was an object wrapped in a reed mat, and slung from a pole, supported between two trees, the cords supporting it passed under the shoulders and knees, so that the latter were slightly flexed by the weight of the body, and allowed one just to perceive a human shape through the rigid outline of the bango mat. Looking round, I saw a number of graves—some fairly recent—but no other interment like the above. The mounds were not like ours, but nearly as broad as long, and looked more like rough garden-beds than anything else. On them were laid broken sifting-baskets, handles of hoes (or axes), and pots, these last with a hole in the bottom of each. Pots of all sorts and sizes were scattered all over the grove, some of them seemingly very old. There was nothing else to mark the older graves, which were now level with the surrounding soil. I noticed two or three shallow pits near the mounds; these were not half-completed graves (for the digging is not begun till the corpse is actually on the spot), but traps to catch the wizards, in case they should arrive with the views indicated in a former chapter.

There are two possible explanations of what I saw, neither of which I succeeded in obtaining at the time. One is that people dying of smallpox (and perhaps other infectious diseases) are not buried in the earth, but the corpse is ‘hung up to let the disease fly away with the wind, instead of keeping it about the place.’ The intention is thus excellent from a sanitary point of view, if the result is unfortunately rather wide of the mark. As it happened that the disease had just about that time been brought down from the Lake by some Atonga, and several people in the Blantyre neighbourhood had died of it, this was probably the reason in the above case. (See note at end of chapter.)

Some clans of the Atonga appear to have been in the habit of burying their dead in trees, placing the corpses in their mats on convenient forked branches; and, as there were a good many Atonga temporarily in the district, it is just possible that the man so buried may have belonged to one of the clans in question; though the grove was commonly known as ‘the Chipeta burying-ground,’ and used, I believe, by members of that tribe only—or at least by dwellers in the villages called by their name. The Anyanja and Yaos bury with the legs bent; the Atonga, apparently, lay the body stretched at full length.

As soon as any one is known to be dead, the wail is raised by the women about the hut. Sometimes (among the Atonga) some of the nearest friends, when the end is seen to be at hand, come out of the hut and cry silently till told that all is over.

The ‘first mourning’ takes place inside the hut, where the wife or mother holds up the dead in her arms, or the body is laid across the knees of the mourners as they sit on the ground. The wailing is kept up till the ‘undertakers’ (adzukulu, or awilo) enter to prepare the corpse for burial, when every one else leaves the hut. These may or not be relatives—more usually they are not—but are thenceforth considered as connected with the family by a special tie. They close the eyes (a dead man who has no friends to do this for him is said ‘to lie with glaring eyes’—kutuzuka maso), wash the corpse, swathe it in calico, and lay it on a mat, which is then rolled round it and tied up with bark-string. When they have finished they wash their hands in ‘medicine-water,’ because they handled a corpse.

All this time ‘the mourning at the door’ is going on. It lasts two, three, or sometimes five days; in the case of a chief who is buried inside his hut, perhaps for weeks. In the hot climate of the Tonga country the burial is the same day, if the death takes place in the morning; but if not, it is felt to be more decent to wait till next day, so as to avoid all appearance of hurrying things over.

The spaces between the verandah-posts are filled in, so as to make small rooms, in which the family sleep till the mourning is over—sometimes on leaves spread on the ground instead of the usual mats. The women keep up the ‘keening,’ seated on the ground, or walk about, calling on the dead, ‘Alas! alas! (mai ine), my father! Ah! Pembereka!’—or whatever the name may be. They put earth, ashes or flour, on their heads, tie bands of plaited grass or palm-fibre round their heads and arms (these are worn till they drop off), and let their hair grow; all ornaments are laid aside, and old, soiled clothes put on.

The death is reported to the village chief, while the preparations for burial are begun, and at the same time messengers are sent to relatives at a distance, each of whom carries a present—perhaps a fowl or a hoe; the acceptance of this means that no suspicions of foul play are entertained. With the Atonga, a payment (sometimes quite a large one) is made, on their arrival, to those relations who come to the funeral; after they have received it, they go to view the body, and give permission for burial. If they do not consider the amount sufficient, the undertakers will not close the door of the hut (a sign that the preparations are complete) till more has been given.

During the mourning at the door, the drums are kept going day and night, to keep the witches from the body. The lamentations go on, interspersed with praises of the dead man—his greatness, his kindness, and generosity. ‘That man gave us to eat,’ they will say; ‘we ate at his hands, he killed his fattest; were it riches, he was always giving; his mourning has gone forth far and wide; we feasted at his hands.’ Guns are fired, where available, at frequent intervals, to let people at a distance know that there is mourning at the village.

When all is ready for the burial, the ‘undertakers’ fasten the body in its mat shroud to a long bamboo pole, and so carry it between them on their shoulders. The nearest relative does not as a rule go to the funeral, nor any one under age—i.e. who has not yet been to the mysteries; but there is a large following of other people. The men carry hoes and baskets for lifting out the earth; the women, who walk in the rear, carry the funeral offerings of porridge and beer. The site of the grave is marked out by the principal man present, and the body is laid aside under a tree while the digging goes on. When the grave is deep enough, stakes are driven in all round the sides, and two forked poles planted in the bottom, to receive the ends of the carrying-pole when the body is lowered into the grave, so that it is suspended without touching the ground. The space is covered in with cross bars on top before filling in the earth. These precautions are intended to prevent witches from getting at the dead, but are by no means universally observed. The Anyanja ‘cover with a little earth, then tread it down, then pour in much and cover it up fully’; and the Atonga, after filling in the grave, break the pole in the middle, and plant one-half at the head, and the other at the foot.

The deceased’s personal possessions are put into the grave with him before the earth is filled in. Ivory and beads, if buried with their late owner, are first ground to powder between stones, to make them useless to witches and perhaps to more prosaic resurrectionists, if any such can be found to brave the terrors of the place and the risks of prosecution. When all is finished, the women lay the offerings on the grave, also the deceased’s water-jar, in which a hole is made, and gourd drinking-cup, which is broken. The ‘undertakers’ sometimes eat the offerings, but no one else touches them; it is believed that any one doing so would be seized with madness.

We have already seen that some Atonga clans suspend the corpse instead of burying it; others bury in the usual way, except in the case of persons of high rank, where they lay the body on the ground and erect a fence round it, covering in the top with heavy logs.

Young children of a few days old are not formally mourned for, and are buried by the women only. People who die of the mwavi ordeal are not buried at all; they are looked on as accursed and their bodies thrown away into the bush to be eaten by hyenas. This is also sometimes done with slaves. Men killed in battle, if their friends can get possession of the body at all, are not taken home, but buried on the war-path.

Slaves used to be sacrificed at the death of a Yao chief, but only in certain clans (the Abanda, Amilansi, and perhaps others); ten for an important chief, or fewer for one of less standing. The master’s death was kept secret for a time, till the required number had been secured in slave-sticks. They were killed at the grave-side and thrown in before the body was lowered. Sometimes they were buried alive, and this was done till recently by the Atonga, who, if one slave was buried with a chief, made him lie in the grave, clasping the dead man in his arms. If there were several, they sat in the grave facing each other, and the corpse was laid across their knees. If any of them sneezed after taking his place in the grave, his life was spared, as it was believed that the spirit thus signified his refusal of that particular victim. Mr George Pirie says of the Babemba, that the people so sacrificed died willingly; and indeed slaves are often sufficiently attached to their masters to make such devotion possible. The funeral ceremonies of the Atonga include some interesting details not mentioned above; some of them may be Yao and Nyanja also, but I cannot find any record of them. I quote the account of the Rev. A. C. MacAlpine:—

‘In taking the body out of the hut, exit was not made by the door, for by that the living only passed out, and they must not slight the dead by treating him as if he were still alive. So they broke down the back wall of the hut opposite the door, and through the hole so made passed out with the body. The children of the village had meanwhile been told to hide out of the way, although the children of the deceased were brought up to the bier and lifted over it by the azukuru.[21] Before they bore the corpse away, they swung it to and fro outside the hut, where it had passed out, chanting the while, “We are leaving to-day; we follow our fellows.” In front of the procession walked a man blowing a reed whistle, while other mourners followed the bier carrying weapons, utensils, trinkets, and offerings to be buried in the grave or laid on the top. Last of all went a woman with a hoe and a basket, into which she dropped various roots growing beside the path which the funeral had followed, and which she had dug up with the hoe. These were hurriedly prepared by her as a charm with which to purify the party on their return from the graves to the village.

‘On arrival at the graveyard, the people begun to shout and clap their hands to warn the spirits supposed to be about.’ After the grave was dug and the body lowered into it, the chief undertaker (called chimbwi, or hyena, because he is not afraid to approach the dead), ‘descended into the grave and untied the fastenings round the dead, exposing the face for a few minutes; whatever had been brought to be buried along with the dead was arranged about the corpse according to custom, and finally arranging the grave-clothes and re-covering the face, the chimbwi climbed out again. The nearest relatives, one on each side of the grave, kneeling down and doing homage to the dead, pushed the first earth into the grave, using their elbows to do so. After a little, the whole company assisted in filling up the grave.... Prayers to the dead, conducted by the chimbwi, with responses from the other mourners, completed the obsequies at the grave, all the company having paid respect to the dead by falling from a sitting position on to their backs, clapping their hands.’

On their return from the grave, the whole party wash in ‘medicine-water.’ Sometimes, on the way back, they gather the leaves of a particular shrub, and prepare it for themselves; but sometimes special men are called in from a distance to make the medicine. Atonga mourners go to bathe in a running stream before entering the village; after this, the chimbwi fetches a torch of grass pulled from the roof of the dead man’s hut, lights it at the fire in the same hut, jumps over it himself, and then holds it a few inches from the ground for the whole party to jump over, one by one. As they do so, the woman who has gathered the roots rubs them on back and breast of each person; and they are then sufficiently purified to come home.

The Babemba seem to make some attempt at mummifying the corpses of their chiefs, by rubbing the body all over with boiled maize, repeating the process till the whole skin becomes dry and shrivelled.

The following is an account, by an eye-witness, of the funeral of the Angoni chief, Mombera, who died in 1891:—

‘Men were there from all parts of the tribe, sitting in the cattle-kraal—an immense enclosure open to the sky. Before the grave was dug, one of his brothers jumped up, and placing his hands behind his head, advanced towards the place of burial, mourning all the time and performing a sort of waltzing movement. All the men at the same moment jumped to their feet and stood mourning. After this subsided, the digging of the grave was proceeded with. It was not finished till next day. Meanwhile, companies of people were coming and going, and on entering the village, stood mourning and crying at the top of their voice, “Baba be! Baba be!”[22] Before the body was brought out, there was a curious procession of his wives on their hands and knees to the grave, decorated with great bunches of feathers that only the chief is allowed to wear. Soon after, the body was brought in, rolled in cloth, and deposited in the grave in a sitting posture with his face to the east. This was the signal for all jumping up, and closing round the grave in a big circle, and there mourning and rending the air with cries. Only men were allowed in the kraal at this time. (The Zulus never allow women in the cattle-kraal at any time.) They stood with their shields over their heads, crying out. Afterwards the young men came marching in in companies and stood mourning for a little, then retired. Meanwhile they were depositing in the grave along with him an immense amount of calico, dresses, etc.—I dare say the accumulation of years; cooking-pots, drinking-vessels, mats, and pipes also went in. During this time, the women were mourning in their own style and causing a fearful din. They appeared as if bereft of their senses, catching one another, and going through some queer movements.’

Among the Anyanja of the Lake (at Likoma and on the east side), the place of the sacred grove is taken by something like a mausoleum. A small house is built over the grave (instead of the grave being dug within the house occupied when living), or it is planted round with a hedge of euphorbia; these fashions may perhaps have been borrowed from the coast men. I have seen the grave of a Yao chief near Domasi, covered with what looked like a flat slab of concrete, but was probably an earthen mound smoothly plastered over with mud. It was enclosed in a high reed fence. The idea of this, too, was probably imported.

The subject of offerings to the spirit, which are sometimes made at the grave, has been discussed in a former chapter. As there stated, they are more usually presented elsewhere, unless the deceased has been buried inside his own house. But, though avoided by the relations, the grave is held sacred, and lawsuits may arise out of its desecration. One of the worst acts of sacrilege that can be committed—in fact, an act amounting to social suicide—is ‘to break a pot at the grave of some family not your own ... the offender’s life is forfeited, and he lives only as the slave of the grave-owners till redeemed.’

The next step after the burial is to destroy the house occupied by the deceased. It is burned or pulled down, and the foundation dug over. The thatch and other things are carried away and burned at the cross-roads, and what is not burned is buried; the site is swept all over, and fresh earth spread on it. Children are warned not to play there. ‘A pot is put down to receive offerings of beer, and when any special offering is given to the deceased, it is usually presented here. If this place become too public (as when children play near and send dust into the pot), the pot will be removed and placed under a tree at a little distance from the village.’

If the man is buried in his own house, as is sometimes done with chiefs, it is not taken down, but shut up and left to decay. A large part of the dead man’s stock of calico is draped over the roof, and offerings are presented under the verandah. A local head-man named Matope died near Blantyre in 1893, and the white roof of his hut was a landmark visible for miles throughout the following year. In such cases, a hole is first dug in the floor, then a niche is made in the side of the hole. The position of this niche is carefully concealed from all except those immediately concerned, and no two graves of this kind have it in the same place.

On the day when the house is taken down, the mourners, in some cases, have their heads shaved, and some of the hair is buried on the site of the house. This is only where there are two shavings; where there is only one, the hair is allowed to grow till the end of the mourning. It is thought that the hair which the deceased has seen must not remain after he is buried, or at any rate after the subsequent ceremonies are finished.

The mourning may last for two or even three months longer. Its duration is decided by the most influential relative. The survivors do not wash or oil themselves; in some cases they are forbidden to eat warm food, to use salt, or to drink beer. Yet beer is sometimes brewed during this period, to be drunk at the mourning dances which take place from time to time. The Atonga keep a fire burning all this time in front of the dead man’s house (which seemingly they do not destroy), called the ‘forbidden fire,’ because it may not be used for any ordinary purposes. It has been kindled by the chief undertaker from the fire within the deceased’s house, with a wisp of grass out of the roof—like the torch already mentioned. If a fire is wanted for cooking, a light must be fetched from one of the houses of the living. When the mourning is over, the first thing done is to brew a large quantity of beer, and, when that is ready, to kill fowls and cook porridge—in fact, to hold the funeral feast, which in other parts of the world takes place immediately after the burial. This is intended to convey that sorrow is not to last for ever; but the dead is not forgotten—on the contrary, he is especially remembered, and his spirit is supposed to share in the festivities. Regular drinking-songs are sung in chorus. The undertakers attend and superintend the shaving of the mourners’ heads, taking off a little piece of hair in front and one behind for each person, and leaving the rest to be done by others. The hair is buried on the site of the house; the Atonga burn it in a fresh fire made by rubbing two sticks,[23] and the ‘forbidden fire’ is put out.

On the day of this shaving, what corresponds to the proving of the will is done—the deceased’s affairs are settled, and his property, if any, handed over to his successor. With the succession to the chieftainship we shall deal in another chapter. A man’s next heir is his eldest surviving brother, or failing brothers, his sister’s son. We have already said that the dead man’s wife or wives are inherited by his successors; but this requires some qualification. What really happens, among one section at least of the Anyanja, is this:—‘The relations, after a decent interval’ (it is the rule that, during the period of mourning, nothing must be said about the disposal of the property or re-marriage of the widows), ‘take a corn-stalk, break it into as many pieces as there are eligible men in the family, and send them to the woman by the hand of the chief of the bearers[24] (who are chosen from outside the family). She may take one up from the ground and show it, saying, ‘I want so and so.’ The man so named becomes the heir. If the woman refuses all the men, she will have to repay the original marriage gifts which her husband made to her family, and often much more. If the man chosen refuses the woman, he sends her an arrow or a fowl, or some other small present, but usually an arrow, and tells her to marry some other man. If so, he gets no marriage gifts returned to him.’

Some of a man’s property is, as we have seen, buried with him. Out of the rest, his successor has to pay the funeral expenses, including heavy fees to the undertakers, who, besides, have partaken of the offerings and the funeral feast. There may also be a prosecution for witchcraft to be paid for out of the estate, though this may be compensated by damages. If, however, the deceased had himself been prosecuted and had died of the ordeal, his heir has to pay damages to the bewitched person or his representatives.

There are certain well-understood causes of death which are not supposed to require any investigation, though, according to some, every death is put down to witchcraft. The witch is believed to kill a person, and then, when his relations have buried him, to send out messengers to find out where the grave is. When they come back, they tell their master that they have seen the meat (the ‘game’—i.e. the corpse), and say, ‘Come along.’ Then the owl ‘which sits on the head of the chief’ goes out and summons all the witches to the feast. The animals lead the way to the grave, a fire is made, and the chief asks who it was that killed the person they are about to eat. One answers, ‘It was I,’ and the chief tells him to ‘bring the meat out.’ ‘So the man who killed him sounds a rattle and calls him by his early name’—the name he bore before he attended the mysteries, which has a compelling power over him—and he comes out. The wizard then reproaches him for real or imaginary insults and injuries—possibly there are unhealthy-minded persons who will brood for years over fancied wrongs, and when the man they are nursing a grudge against dies, imagine that they have killed him—and finally kills him over again. ‘Then they take the meat and divide it, and take it with them to their village; the mfiti cooks it at night and eats it, and takes a pot and digs to conceal it in the deserted house of the deceased, and leaves and goes to his own house as if nothing had happened.’

If all the energy expended to prevent these proceedings counts for anything, it may well be believed that they never happen at all. When the circumstances of a death seem to warrant suspicion, the witch-detective, whose methods are described elsewhere, is sometimes called in, and the people pointed out by her are either killed at once or compelled to drink mwavi. But the ordeal is sometimes put in operation without resorting to her. Persons who feel themselves under suspicion may demand it in order to clear their character. So firmly do they believe that it will not hurt them if innocent, that no one, unless conscious of guilt, ever seems to shrink from the trial.

The Yaos hold that it should not be administered to a free person without grave cause—i.e. unless suspicion is definitely directed to some one person. The Angoni and Makololo chiefs, whose government (at least as regards the subject tribes) was more despotic, used to order wholesale mwavi-drinkings, trying a whole village or district to discover the supposed culprit. In these cases, the poison was often taken by proxy and given to fowls or dogs—each animal being tied by a string to the person whom it represented, and whose guilt or innocence was decided by its death or recovery. There was a cause célèbre of this kind at Chekusi’s kraal, about twenty years ago. Chekusi’s mother had been suffering from rheumatism, and had been treated for it by Dr. Henry, of the Livingstonia Mission. Shortly afterwards, unfortunately, she committed suicide in a fit of depression, and, naturally, things looked very black for the doctor. However, there were two other possible culprits, and a trial took place with three sets of fowls, one for the Europeans at Livlezi Mission, one, I think, for Mponda, with whom Chekusi was then more or less at war, and the third for the other suspected party. The proceedings were complicated by the number of victims demanded by the importance of the occasion: had one been allotted to each defendant, the decision would have been quite clear; as it was, some of each set died and some recovered, and the issue was such hopeless confusion that the case was dropped without arriving at a verdict.

The poison used throughout the Shiré Highlands, on the Lake, and by the Angoni appears to be the same; it is the pounded bark of a tree known to science as Erythrophleum guineense. Its effect is fatal within an hour or two, unless it causes sickness; this symptom is therefore held to be a sign of innocence. Its different action on different people probably arises from the strength of the dose being varied by accident or design.

When a trial of this sort is decided on, the mapondera, or ‘pounder,’ is sent for. He prepares the poison in the bwalo, before the assembled people, by pounding the bark, steeped in water, in a small wooden mortar, with a pestle which has a cover fixed round it to prevent the liquid splashing out. The result is a red infusion, said by those who have been fortunate enough to taste it and recover, to be very bitter. This information I had from a man who complained that he was not well, and to whom, finding that he seemed to have feverish symptoms, I offered a dose of quinine. After tasting it—and retiring out of sight to reject it with decency—he declined any more, on the ground that it was exactly like the mwavi he had been compelled to drink a month ago. The usual dose is about half a pint; the accused come up one by one to drink, and then sit down on the ground to wait till it takes effect. This, as stated, is usually within an hour or two. In cases where public feeling is very strong against the accused, the end is not always waited for, but he or she is lynched as soon as the symptoms seem likely to be fatal.

It is said that the accused has a voice in the selection of the professional who is to mix the draught; but most natives believe so firmly in the infallibility of the mwavi-test, that in practice it matters little to them who compounds it. Of course, the mapondera has opportunities of diluting the dose, as his own inclinations or hints previously received from interested parties may prompt; and this is probably the reason why the greater number of those who submit to the test usually escape. I remember an occasion when several families escaping from the war which was going on between Chekusi’s men and Bazale, near Lake Malombe, halted at a village near Ntumbi, where a child belonging to one of them died. They accused the people of the place of bewitching them, and called on them to drink mwavi, which was immediately done. One child of the village died; it is likely that it succumbed to a dose which was not strong enough to kill the adults. But the matter did not end here. The people who had demanded the ordeal were subjects of Chekusi’s brother Mandala, who was also the over-lord of certain kraals in the neighbourhood, while the villagers who had drunk the poison were under the immediate jurisdiction of Chekusi himself. The latter thought that his rights had been infringed, and insisted that some of his brother’s subjects should take mwavi in their turn. I do not know how many did so this time, but the number of deaths was two.

Two other cases came to my personal knowledge—one a wholesale affair of the kind already referred to. Chekusi had been ill; and Mandala (apparently just then on exceptionally good terms with him) sent for a number of people to the royal kraal, and administered the ordeal to find out who had bewitched him. Among those who went from Ntumbi were two old men mentioned in a previous chapter—Pembereka and Kaboa. The former died—Kaboa either recovered or he did not drink the poison, which, however, is unusual, and, I fancy, unprecedented; and, if I understood him rightly, it is surprising that he should have been allowed to depart without further trouble. What he said to me was, ‘I refused’ (ndakana), which might, however, conceivably mean that his system had rejected the drug. The mourning for poor old Pembereka continued at his kraal for two or three days, and subsequently his family went up to Chekusi’s to finish the mourning there and (we were told) to drink mwavi, but on what grounds I never made out: in any case there was no further fatality. As we have already seen, those who die by mwavi are not usually buried, but cast out to be eaten by wild beasts; we gathered from rumours which reached us that this was not done in Pembereka’s case, but that he was buried at Chekusi’s.

The other case was a local one: a young girl died suddenly—possibly of pneumonia or rapid consumption; she was delicate, but seemed in fairly good health when we last saw her, about three months before her death. Her father, the Ntumbi head-man, made a number of people drink mwavi, and one young man died—chifukwa wodiera antu, as my informant said—‘because he was an eater of men.’ It is possible, however, that there might have been more deaths in this case but for the action of an English planter who heard of the matter in time and came to the rescue with ipecacuanha.

A case which all the older residents in British Central Africa will remember took place at Blantyre. Mr. John Moir, at that time manager of the African Lakes Company, got wind of the trial and arrived on the scene when matters were already so far advanced that it seemed best to act first and explain afterwards. Accordingly, he began by kicking over the doctor’s mortar, and then set forth his views on the subject. He succeeded in getting the proceedings quashed, but—and this is the interesting feature in the story—the rescued victim considered himself ever afterwards to have a standing grievance against Mr. Moir. He was a local head-man of some standing, and complained that, as he had not been allowed the opportunity of clearing his character, he was under a cloud and likely to remain so for the rest of his life. His people were leaving him and settling elsewhere—no one cared to be associated with a person of such doubtful reputation—in short, he was a ruined man!

The administration of the ordeal-poison is a very solemn ceremony; commonly, as we have seen, it takes place in the bwalo, or village forum, but Livingstone speaks of some Batoka head-men making a pilgrimage to the graves of their ancestors for the purpose.

‘The ordeal by the poison of the muave is resorted to by the Batoka as well as by the other tribes; but a cock is often made to stand proxy for the supposed witch. Near the confluence of the Kafue the Mambo, or chief, with some of his head-men, came to our sleeping-place with a present; their foreheads were smeared with white flour, and an unusual seriousness marked their demeanour. Shortly before our arrival they had been accused of witchcraft; conscious of innocence, they accepted the ordeal. For this purpose they made a journey to the sacred hill of Nchomokela, on which repose the bodies of their ancestors; and after a solemn appeal to the unseen spirits to attest the innocence of their children, they swallowed the muave, vomited, and were therefore declared not guilty.’[25]