NATIVES OF BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 449 
surrounding crowd and the now-convicted sorcerer is lynched, the body being 
subsequently burnt. 
The negro, it will be seen, believes that life does not finish when the body 
dies. He has been led to this vague hope of immortality insensibly. It has 
seemed impossible that the father of the household, the headman of the village, 
or the chief of the tribe could abruptly vanish when he has exercised such an 
important influence during his lifetime. It would appear as if the Bantu negro 
had built up God by degrees out of ancestor worship. Dr. Bleek pointed out 
years ago that the common word for God over the eastern half of Bantu Africa 
—Mulungu—could be traced to the Zulu word “ Munkulunkulu ”—the great, 
great one, or, the old, old one. There is some truth in this, but 1 think that a 
second belief has come to meet ancestor worship, a belief in the personification 
of the heavens, of the sun, moon, and stars, the rain, thunder, lightning: some 
mighty Being or Agency who exercises ruling powers over the Universe, the 
Being which may by tribe after tribe have been identified with some great dead 
chief. Still their idea of God—and they all believe in a supreme God—is 
somewhat dissociated from their firm belief in life beyond the grave : in the 
existence after death of their ancestors, though this existence is not held to be 
necessarily perpetual. The ghost or its influence fades away after a time. Yet 
they believe that some spirits live interminably especially if the deceased has 
been a chief of great influence. Originally, no doubt, they were in the habit 
of thrusting their dead into caves or the hollows of mountains. 1 Then at other 
times and places dense forests were specially used for the secretion of the dead 
body ; so in time it came to be thought that most mountains and thick black 
forests were haunted by spirits of deceased persons. They have the firmest 
belief possible in ghosts, and will tell long circumstantial stories about the 
“spooks’’they have seen—prosaic stories usually connected with daylight, as 
where a woman declares that while winnowing or pounding corn in the noon¬ 
tide, she looked out in the courtyard and saw the spirit of So-and-so passing 
along looking exactly as though he were alive. It is thought that these ghosts 
have considerable power for good or evil, and they are often propitiated, though 
if they become troublesome (that is to say, if vexatious incidents occur or their 
descendants fall sick or meet with misfortunes) revenge may be taken on the 
bones of the dead persons to whose spirits the annoyance is attributed. They 
are dug up from their graves and thrown away, or removed to a far place to be 
buried under some tree which is supposed to have a restraining influence over 
the spirit. Occasionally one of these departed ancestors is believed to have 
taken an affection for some eccentric looking rock, or waterfall or rapid, but I 
have never met with any belief in this part of Africa in spirits which were like 
the demigods of the Greeks-—the soul of the river, the lake, the tree, the 
mountain. 2 
Yet in some tribes there is a distinct belief in an evil deity either as the 
1 There is a large native sepulchre in a ravine at Zomba mountain with precipitous sides. Into this 
hole m'any dead persons have been thrown, and their whitened bones can be seen there. There are 
numerous legends about all the great mountains of the Shire Highlands. In the caves of this mountain 
such and such a chief was buried ; on that hill another, and so on, these mountains now being more or less 
the home of the chiefs’ spirits. 
2 Dr. Cross differs from me in this respect. He asserts that a belief of this kind in earth and water- 
spirits is held by the Wankonde. I am inclined to think that it would be found that these lesser divinities 
are really the spirits of departed ancestors who may be associated with some remarkable object or scenery. 
Still the Wankonde are a people somewhat apart and peculiar who have evidently been isolated for 
centuries at the north end of Lake Nyasa, and have maintained many old beliefs elsewhere worn away 
just as they have retained a singularly archaic form of Bantu language. 
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