ZULU MEOICINK AND MEDICINE-MEN. 3 



knowledge and treatment of disease ? A study of these latter 

 as existent to-day will no doubt present us with a very fair 

 picture of how they must have been before Imhotpou and 

 ^sculapins became gods. 



(2) The GtEnekal Status and Initiation of the Medicine- 

 man. 



Compared with the sleek and imposing personality of the 

 chief the medicine-man presents quite a mean appearance, 

 though picturesque and awesome withal. Along with the 

 chief he shares the greatest power in the savage tribe — not, 

 it is true, the power of supreme authority, but a power over 

 life and death not less effective and real, though hidden and 

 mysterious. His well-wrinkled features bear the unmistakable 

 stamp of a thinking mind, and his intelligent eye has that 

 flash of deep cunning so well suited to one who has so often 

 been the accomplice, behind the scenes, to sinister deeds. 

 His lean, wiry frame betokens a life of toilsome, if well- 

 rewarded, activity rather than of luxury and ' repose — an 

 activity consisting mainly in constant arduous journeyings 

 throughout the land, and frequently even into the foreign 

 lands of adjoining tribes. 



Out in the full panoply of a professional progress, his body 

 is betrimmed with a medley of the most fantastic trappings. 

 A plume of feathers waves above his head-ring, and a circlet 

 of lion-claws surrounds his neck. Various cow-tails dangle 

 from his arms and chest, supplementing the square strip of 

 leopard-skin and the bundle of genet-tails that cover his 

 nakedness behind and before. Numerous bunches of goat- 

 horns, blackened with the smoke of his hut, and sundry small 

 grass-woven baskets and bundles of rag-packages, brown with 

 dirt, containing his strange assortment of drugs and charms, 

 are strung from every point of vantage about neck, shoulders 

 and body, A long pouch, holding his snufP-box, and made 

 from the whole skin of an unborn calf, dangles from his left 



