358 THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



the result will be drought or small-pox. These rumours 

 which may account for the Lybian stranger-sacri- 

 fices in the olden time, are still dangerous to travellers. 

 The Mganga must remedy the evil. His spells are those 

 of fetissists in general, the mystic use of something foul, 

 poisonous, or difficult to procure, such as the album 

 graecum of hyaenas, snakes' fangs, or lions' hair ; these 

 and similar articles are collected with considerable 

 trouble by the young men of the tribe for the use of the 

 rain-maker. But he is a weatherwise man, and rains in 

 tropical lands are easily foreseen. Not unfrequently, 

 however, he proves himself a false prophet ; and when 

 all the resources of cunning fail he must fly for dear 

 life from the victims of his delusion. 



The Mganga is also a predictor and a soothsayer. He 

 foretels the success or failure of commercial undertak- 

 ings, of wars, and of kidnapping-commandos ; he foresees 

 famine and pestilence, and he suggests the means of 

 averting calamities. He fixes also, before the com- 

 mencement of any serious affair, fortunate conjunctions, 

 without which a good issue cannot be expected. He 

 directs expiatory offerings. His word is ever powerful 

 to expedite or to delay the march of a caravan ; and in 

 his quality of augur he considers the flight of birds and 

 the cries of beasts, like his prototype of the same class 

 in ancient Europe and in modern Asia. 



The principal instrument of the Mganga's craft is one 

 of the dirty little buyu or gourds which he wears in a 

 bunch round his waist ; and the following is the usual 

 programme when the oracle is to be consulted. The 

 magician brings his implements in a bag of matting; 

 his demeanour is serious as the occasion ; he is carefully 

 greased, and his head is adorned with the diminutive 

 antelope-horns fastened by a thong of leather above the 



