The Makololo
Explained To Us That He Was A Pondoro, Or A Man Who Can Change His
Form At Will,
And added that he trembles when he smells gunpowder.
"Do you not see how he is trembling now?" We told
Them to ask him to
change himself at once into a lion, and we would give him a cloth for
the performance. "Oh no," replied they; "if we tell him so, he may
change himself and come when we are asleep and kill us." Having
similar superstitions at home, they readily became as firm believers
in the Pondoro as the natives of the village. We were told that he
assumes the form of a lion and remains in the woods for days, and is
sometimes absent for a whole month. His considerate wife had built
him a hut or den, in which she places food and beer for her
transformed lord, whose metamorphosis does not impair his human
appetite. No one ever enters this hut except the Pondoro and his
wife, and no stranger is allowed even to rest his gun against the
baobab-tree beside it: the Mfumo, or petty chief, of another small
village wished to fine our men for placing their muskets against an
old tumble-down hut, it being that of the Pondoro. At times the
Pondoro employs his acquired powers in hunting for the benefit of the
village; and after an absence of a day or two, his wife smells the
lion, takes a certain medicine, places it in the forest, and there
quickly leaves it, lest the lion should kill even her.
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