78 
Seven Years in Central Africa. 
[May, 
who, I am told, string up by the neck to tall trees the little 
children they have taken captive, a spectacle which gives enter- 
tainment to the whole countryside. Their punishments are very 
cruel. Burning alive is, among the Barotse, a common occurrence; 
also tying the victim hand and foot and laying him near a nest 
of large black ants, which in a few days pick his bones clean."^ 
TRUST IN KINGS. 
There is an old but waning belief that a chief is a demigod, 
and in heavy thunderstorms the Barotse flock to the chief's yard 
for protection from the lightning. I have been greatly distressed 
at seeing them fall on their knees before the chief, entreating him 
to open the water-pots of heaven and send rain upon their gardens. 
But last year the chief acknowledged to me that he knew he was 
unable to do so ; yet he keeps up the delusion for the sake of power. 
These ancient beliefs of the negro in the power of chiefs' medicines 
and enchantments have, as might be supposed, very slender props 
to rest on, and they are kept up merely to fill a want in the 
mind, much as a drowning man will clutch at a straw in his need 
of something to bear him up. The king's servants declare 
themselves to be invincible, because they are the servants of god 
(meaning the king) ; but when some discontented Barotse went to 
kill Sepopo, the late chief, none fled faster than the king's body- 
guard. Sepopo, like the present king, would boast that he 
possessed medicines and enchantments which made his body 
impervious to spear or bullet; but when he heard of the insurgents, 
Sepopo fled in haste, and a bullet through the chest killed him. 
THE POWER OF CONSCIENCE. 
Man is a very fragile being, and he is fully conscious that he 
requires supernatural or divine aid. Apart from the distinct reve- 
lation given by God in the first chapter of Romans, there is much 
to prove that the heathen African is a man to whom the living 
* When manners and customs are referred to, the particular district must 
be borne in mind. Africa is an immense continent, and there is as much 
variety in the customs of the different tribes as in their languages. Certain 
tribes take delight in cruelty and bloodshed ; others have a religious fear of 
shedding human blood, and treat aged people with every kindness, to secure 
their goodwill after death. By other tribes the aged would be cast out as 
mere food for wild animals. 
