40 LECTURE II. 



way being beset with difficulties and almost impassable. 

 In fact, the only conveyance was ox-back, and dense 

 forests had to be passed through by tortuous paths. I 

 resolved, therefore, to go back, and try if the Zambesi did 

 not furnish a good pathway to the eastern coast. 



I did not find the people in that direction quite so well 

 disposed towards me as the western tribes : the former 

 were accustomed to the slave-trade, and asked payment for 

 every thing : they prayed to the departed spirits of dead 

 men, and believed that the deceased had power to in- 

 fluence the living. When I was at Cassange, the farthest 

 inland station of the Portuguese, the governor, with whom 

 I was stopping, had a sick child, and the nurse sent for a 

 diviner to tell the cause of its illness. This man worked 

 himself into frenzy, foamed at the mouth, and, pretending 

 to be speaking under the influence of the fit, said the 

 child was being killed by the soul of a trader, whose 

 goods its father had stolen, and he said he should make 

 an offering to appease the vengeance of the departed spirit. 

 Now, it so happened that a native of Cassange had re- 

 cently died, leaving an assignment, under which the 

 governor had taken his goods ; and the natives, not un- 

 derstanding the circumstances, said he had robbed him. 

 This was the diviner's cue. The governor quietly sent 

 to a friend of his, and they each took a stick, and ap- 

 plied them with such force to the back of the diviner, 

 that he fled in the most undignified manner. I have 

 never read of clairvoyance or spirit-rapping being tested 



