100 A JOURNEY UP THE RIVER CONGO. 
country, the medicine-man was called upon to say who 
had-“ bewitched ” her. He assembled a sort of coroner’s 
inquest, and they came to the unanimous vonclusion that 
King Mlongo had killed the woman with his sorceries. 
The wretched monarch would have had to take “ poison- 
water” had not an English missionary opportunely 
arrived at his village, and laughed the people out of their 
foolish superstition. To please the white stranger, the 
THE ‘* WIDOWED ONE.” 
king was pardoned by the fetish man, but pardoned 
reluctantly, for his real sin was not having bewitched 
a woman, but being a terrible miser. Avarice amongst 
these people is considered the blackest of crimes, and had 
king Mlongo been 1n the habit of freely lavishing his gin 
and his cloth on his subjects, his loving people would not 
have fixed upon him as a sorcerer, nor the heir-apparent 
have been so active in the prosecution. He was very 
little grateful to his benefactor, however, and immediately 
