354 THE LAKE KEGI0NS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



to health ; one specimen will suffice. Several little 

 sticks, like matches, are daubed with ochre, and marks 

 are made with them upon the patient's body. A charm 

 is chanted, the possessed one responds, and at the end 

 of every stave an evil spirit flies from him, the signal 

 being a stick cast by the Mganga upon the ground. 

 Some unfortunates have as many as a dozen haunting 

 ghosts, each of which has his own periapt : the 

 Mganga demands a distinct honorarium for the several 

 expulsions. Wherever danger is, fear will be ; wherever 

 fear is, charms and spells, exorcisms and talismans of 

 portentous powers will be in demand ; and wherever 

 supernaturalisms are in requisition, men will be found, 

 for a consideration, to supply them. 



These strange rites are to be explained upon the 

 principle which underlies thaumaturgy in general: 

 they result from conviction in a gross mass of exagge- 

 rations heaped by ignorance, falsehood, and credulity, 

 upon the slenderest foundation of fact — a fact doubt- 

 less solvable by the application of natural laws. The 

 African temperament has strong susceptibilities, com- 

 bined with what appears to be a weakness of brain, and 

 great excitability of the nervous system, as is proved 

 by the prevalence of epilepsy, convulsions, and hys- 

 teric disease. According to the Arab, El Sara, epi- 

 lepsy, or the falling sickness, is peculiarly common 

 throughout East Africa ; and, as we know by experience 

 in lands more civilised, the sudden prostration, rigidity, 

 contortions, &c. of the patient, strongly suggest the 

 idea that he has been taken and seized (s7ri'hri$Qeis) 

 by, as it were, some external and invisible agent. 

 The negroid is, therefore, peculiarly liable to the 

 epidemical mania called " Phantasmata," which, ac- 

 cording to history, has at times of great mental 



