350 THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



Bassar, a seer or clairvoyant. The Mcbawi is the 

 Sahhar, magician, or adept in the black art. Amongst 

 the Wazegura and the Wasagara is the Mgonezi, a word 

 Arabised into Rammal or Geomantist. He practises 

 the Miramoro, or divination and prediction of fray and 

 famine, death and disease, by the relative position of 

 small sticks, like spilikins, cast at random on the ground. 

 The "rain-maker," or " rain-doctor" of the Cape, common 

 throughout these tribes, and extending far north of the 

 equator, is called in East Africa Mganga, in the plural 

 Waganga: the Arabs term him Tabib, doctor or physician. 



The Mganga, in the central regions termed Mfumo, 

 may be considered as the rude beginning of a sacer- 

 dotal order. These drones, who swarm throughout the 

 land, are of both sexes : the women, however, generally 

 confine themselves to the medical part of the profession. 

 The calling is hereditary, the eldest or the cleverest son 

 begins his neoteric education at an early age, and suc- 

 ceeds to his father's functions. There is little mystery 

 in the craft, and the magicians of Unyamwezi have not 

 refused to initiate some of the Arabs. The power of 

 the Mganga is great: he is treated as a sultan, whose 

 word is law, and as a giver of life and death. He is 



blind, and will be able to take no pleasure ; would it not be better, then, for 

 you to die when this takes place, and you are in pain and trouble, and so 

 make room for your son, as your father did for you ? " 



" No, it would not ; I want to stand all same I stand now." 



" But supposing you should go to a place of happiness after death 

 and " 



" I no savvy nothing about that, I know that I now live, and have too 

 many wives, and niggers (slaves), and canoes," (he did not mean what he said, 

 in saying he had too many wives, &c, it is their way of expressing a great 

 number,) " and that I am king, and plenty of ships come to my country. I 

 know no other ting, and I want to stand." 



I offered a reply, but he would hear no more, and so the conversation on 

 that subject ceased ; and we proceeded to discuss one not much more agree- 

 able to him — the payment of a very considerable debt which he owed me. 



