Near The Confluence Of The Kafue The Mambo, Or
Chief, With Some Of His Headmen, 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, and undertook
To drink the poisoned muave.
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. It is evident that they believe that the soul
has a continued existence; and that the spirits of the departed know
what those they have left behind them are doing, and are pleased or
not according as their deeds are good or evil; this belief is
universal. The owner of a large canoe refused to sell it, because it
belonged to the spirit of his father, who helped him when he killed
the hippopotamus. Another, when the bargain for his canoe was nearly
completed, seeing a large serpent on a branch of the tree overhead,
refused to complete the sale, alleging that this was the spirit of
his father come to protest against it.
Some of the Batoka chiefs must have been men of considerable
enterprise; the land of one, in the western part of this country, was
protected by the Zambesi on the S., and on the N. and E. lay an
impassable reedy marsh, filled with water all the year round, leaving
only his western border open to invasion:
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