160 POPULAR BELIEF. Chap. VII. 



for days, and is sometimes absent for a whole month. His 

 considerate wife had bnilt him a hut or den, in which she 

 places food and beer for her transformed lord, whose metamor- 

 phosis does not impair his human appetite. No one ever 

 enters this hut except the Pondoro and his wife, and no 

 stranger is allowed even to rest his gun against the Baobab- 

 tree beside it : the Mfumo, or petty Chief, of another 

 small village wished to fine our men for placing their 

 muskets against an old tumble-down hut, it being that 

 of the Pondoro. At times the Pondoro employs his acquired 

 powers in hunting for the benefit of the village ; and, after an 

 absence of a day or two, his wife smells the lion, takes a certain 

 medicine, places it in the forest, and there quickly leaves it, 

 lest the lion should kill even her. This medicine enables the 

 Pondoro to change himself back into a man, return to the 

 village, and say " Go and get the game that I have killed 

 for you." Advantage is of course taken of what a lion has 

 done, and they go and bring home the buffalo or antelope 

 killed when he was a lion, or rather found when he was 

 patiently pursuing his course of deception in the forest. We 

 saw the Pondoro of another village dressed in a fantastic 

 style, with numerous charms hung round him, and followed 

 by a troop of boys who were honouring him with rounds 

 of shrill cheering. 



It is believed also that the souls of departed Chiefs 

 enter into lions and render them sacred. On one occasion, 

 when Ave had shot a buffalo in the path beyond the Kafue, 

 a hungry lion, attracted probably by the smell of the 

 meat, came close to our camp, and roused up all hands by his 

 roaring. Tuba Mokoro, imbued with the popular belief that the 

 beast was a Chief in disguise, scolded him roundly during his 

 brief intervals of silence. " You a Chief, eh ? You call your- 



