MURDERS ON ACCOUNT OF WITCHCRAFT. 105 
very few escape. Sometimes the veins of the victim will 
burst open, at other times blood will flow from his nose 
and eyes, and he drops dead a few minutes after drink- 
ingit. Hence the great power of the doctor. Ifa poor 
fellow is supposed to be a wizard, or to have bewitched 
the King or somebody else, he is forced to drink the 
mboundowu whether he likes it or not. If the man dies, 
he is declared a witch; if he survives, he is declared 
innocent, and those who have accused him pay him a 
fine. 
The ordeal is much dreaded by the negroes, who often 
run away from home and stay away all their lives rather 
than submit to it, and will often rather enslave them- 
selves to another tribe. 
When the wizards are said to belong to another vil- 
lage, then wars frequently ensue. The man thought 
guilty is demanded to drink the mboundou, while his 
friends, who know that he will probably die, refuse to 
give him up. 
This belief in witchcraft 1s the great curse of Africa. 
According to this doctrine, every man that dies has been 
bewitched by some one. Death came into the world by 
witchcraft. For almost every man that dies somebody 
is killed, and often several persons are killed. 
The women being deemed of very little account in 
tains many venomous plants, viz., the LoGANIACE ; and, from the pecul- 
iar veining of the leaves, it is probably a species of Strychnos, belonging 
to that section of the genus which includes S. nux vomica. 
The taste of the infusion is extremely bitter. I gave some of the 
_roots to Professor John Torrey, of New York. In the book published ~ 
by the Messrs. Harper, called ‘‘ Explorations in Equatorial Africa,” I 
published the letter this able chemist wrote me on the properties of the 
mboundou. | 
K 2 
