276 SOME EEMABKABLE CUSTOMS. 



tte affected part till they come out. Mr. Backhouse describes 

 the proceedings of a native doctress in South Africa^, which will 

 serve as a typical case. A man was taken ill with a pain in his 

 side, and a Fingo witch was sent for. As she was quite naked, 

 except a rope round her waist, the missionary who lived in the 

 place declined to assist at the ceremony liimself, but sent his 

 wife. The doctress sucked at the man^s side, and produced 

 some grains of Indian com, which she said she had drawn from 

 inside him, and which had caused the disease. The missionary's 

 wife looked in her mouth, and there was nothing there ; but 

 when she sucked again and again, there came more grains of 

 corn. At last a piece of tobacco-leaf made its appearance with 

 the corn, and showed how the trick was done. The woman 

 swallowed the tobacco first to produce nausea, and then a 

 quantity of Indian corn, and by the help of the rope round her 

 waist, she was able so to control her stomach as only to pro- 

 duce a few grains at a time.^ In North and South America, 

 in Borneo, and in Australia, the same cure is part of the doc- 

 tor's work, with the difference only that bones, bits of wood, 

 stones, lizards, fragments of knife-blades, balls of hair, and 

 other miscellaneous articles are produced, and that the tricks 

 by which he keeps up the pretence of sucking them out are 

 perhaps seldom so clever as the African one.^ In Australia the 

 business is profitably worked by one sorcerer charming bits of 

 quartz into the victim's body, so that another has to be sent for 

 to get them out.^ It has been already mentioned that in the 

 North of Ireland the wizards still extract elf-bolts, that is, stone 

 arrow-heads, from the bodies of bewitched cattle.* Southey, 

 who knew a great deal about savages, goes so far as to say of 

 this cure by sucking out extraneous objects, as practised by 

 the native sorcerers of Brazil, that " their mode of quackery 

 was that which is common to all savage conjurors;"* at any 

 rate, its similarity in so many and distant regions is highly re- 



> Backhouse, ' Africa,' p. 284. 



2 Long's Exp., vol. i. p. 261. Klemin, C. G., vol. ii. pp. 169, 335. St. John, 

 vol. i. pp. 62, 201. Lang, ' Queensland,' p. 342. Eyre, vol. ii. p. 360. 

 ^ Grey, Journals, vol. ii. p. 337. 

 * Wilde, Cat. E. I. -i., p. 19. ^ Southey, ' Brazil,' vol. i. p. 238. 



