for effect which would have done credit to a London theatre. It will suffice to
depict one of them, by name Nozinyanga. Her fierce face, spotted with gouts of
red paint on cheek and brow, was partly overshadowed by a helmet-like plume
of the tall feathers of the sakabula bird. In her right hand she carried a light sheaf
of assegais or lances, and on her left arm was slung a small and pretty shield of
dappled ox-hide. Her petticoat, made of a couple of large gay handkerchiefs, was
worn kilt-wise. But if there were little decoration in her skirts, the deficiency
was more than compensated by the bravery of the bead-necklaces, the goat’s-
hair fringes, and the scarlet tassels which covered her from throat to waist. Her
ample chest rose and fell beneath a baldric of leopard skin, fastened across it
with huge brazen knobs; while down her back hung a beautifully dried and
flattened skin of an enormous boa-constrictor.
The interest attaching to these women is derived from the fact that it was of old
the custom, among the Zulu and other South African tribes, to attribute all
mishaps or catastrophes, political or social, to the agency of witches. It is not for
Englishmen to look down with contempt upon this manifestation of barbarism
and ignorance, considering that a similar belief prevailed very generally among
us up to the reign of Charles I., and, in truth, is not wholly extinct even now:
while the extent to which the science of witch-finding was developed in New
England will be known to every reader of Cotton Mather.
When the community had resolved that a certain misfortune was due to the
witches, the next step obviously would be to detect and punish them. For this
purpose the king would summon a great meeting, and cause his subjects to sit on
the ground in a ring or circle, for four or five days. The witch-finders took their
places in the centre, and as they gradually worked themselves up to a frantic
state of frenzy, resembling demoniacal possession, they lightly switched with
their quagga-tail one or other of the trembling spectators, who was immediately
dragged away and butchered on the spot. And not only he, but all the living
things in his hut—wives and children, dogs and cats—not one was left alive, nor
was a stick left standing. Sometimes a whole kraal would be exterminated in this
way; and the reader will perceive how terribly the cruel custom could be made to
gratify private revenge or to work out the king’s tyrannical inclinations.
A terrible little sorceress is described under the name of Nozilwane,[42] whose
weird wistful glance had in it something uncanny and uncomfortable. She was
really dressed beautifully for her part, in lynx skins folded over and over from
waist to knee, the upper part of her body being covered by strings of wild beasts’
teeth and fangs, beads, skeins of gaily-coloured yarn, strips of snake’s skin, and