io6 AFRICAN NATURE NOTES chap. 



which was often conveyed by the two words '*niga 

 impisi " (give him, her, or them to the hyaenas). 

 The wretches were then taken just outside the 

 kraal fence and clubbed to death. Their huts were 

 also pulled down and thrown out. I remember I 



was once sleeping at the house of Mr. C , a 



missionary in Matabeleland, when a lot of natives 

 came to the door very early in the morning, and 

 kept shouting out in a very excited manner, " Come 

 out, missionary, and give us the witch ; we want to 

 take him to his mother, who is a witch also, and kill 

 them both together." It appeared that the man 

 they said was a witch was a native, who had been 

 left in charge of another missionary's house during 

 his master's absence in the Cape Colony, and who 

 by steady work had accumulated enough money to 

 buy a few head of cattle. This man had been 

 accused of bewitching some of the king's cattle, 

 and Lo Bengula had pronounced sentence of death 

 upon him. Directly I saw the men outside Mr. 



C 's house I thought from their manner that 



they had already killed the falsely accused man, 

 although they denied having done so ; but when 



Mr. C and I went across the valley towards 



the poor fellow's kraal on the other side, they all 

 left us. 



It was as I had surmised ; for we found Mr. 

 H 's faithful servant lying on his face just out- 

 side the fence of his kraal, with his elbows tied 

 behind his back and his head in much the same 

 condition as that of Banquo's ghost, as represented 

 on the London stage. On the evening of that day 

 the sun had not been long down when we heard the 

 hyaenas howling, and that night they held high 

 carnival over the murdered man's remains. 



Some idea of the number of hyaenas that used 

 to infest Matabeleland in the old savage times may 

 be gathered from the fact that my old friend the 



