for days, and is sometimes absent for a whole month. His
considerate wife had built him a hut or den, in which she
places food and beer for her transformed lord, whose metamorphosis
does not impair his human appetite. No one ever
enters this hut except the Pondoro and his wife, and no
stranger is allowed even to rest his gun against the Baobab-
tree beside it: the Mfumo, or petty Chief, of another
small village wished to fine our men for placing their
muskets against an old tumble-down hut, it being that
of the Pondoro. At times the Pondoro employs his acquired
powers in hunting for the; benefit of the village; and, after an
absence of a day or two, his wife smells the lion, takes a certain
medicine, places it in the forest, and there quickly leaves it,
lest the lion should kill even her. This medicine enables the
Pondoro to change himself back into a man, return to the
village, and say “ Go and get the game that I have killed
for you.” Advantage is of course taken of what a lion has
done, and they go and bring home the buffalo or antelope
killed when he was a lion, or rather found when he was
patiently pursuing his course of deception in the forest. We
saw the Pondoro of another village dressed in a fantastic
style, with numerous charms hung round him, and followed
by a troop of boys who were honouring him with rounds
of shrill cheering.
I t is believed also that the souls of departed Chiefs
enter into lions and render them sacred. On one occasion,
when we had shot a buffalo in the path beyond the Kafue,
a hungry lion, attracted probably by the smell of the
meat, came close to our camp, and roused up all hands by his
roaring. Tuba Mokoro, imbued with the popular belief that the
beast was a Chief in disguise, scolded himjroundly during his
brief intervals of silence. 3 You a Chief, eh ? You call yourself
a Chief, do you ? What kind of Chief are you to come
sneaking about in the dark, trying to steal our buffalo
meat! Are you not ashamed of yourself? A pretty Chief
tru ly ; you are like the scavenger beetle, and think of yourself
only. You have not the heart of a Chief; why don’t you
kill your own beef? You must have a stone in your chest,
and no heart at all, indeed! ” Tuba Mokoro producing no
impression on the transformed Chief, one of the men, the most
sedate of the party, who seldom spoke, took up the matter,
and tried the lion in another strain. In his slow quiet way
he expostulated with him on the impropriety of such conduct
to strangers, who had never injured him. “ We were travelling
peaceably through the country back to our own Chief. We
never killed people, nor stole anything. The buffalo meat
was ours, not his, and it did not become a great Chief like
him to be prowling round in the dark, trying, like a hyena,
to steal the meat of strangers. He might go and hunt for
himself, as there was plenty of game in the forest.” The
Pondoro, being deaf to reason, and only roaring the louder, the
men became angry, and threatened to send a ball through him
if he did not go away. They snatched up their guns to shoot
him, but he prudently kept in the dark, outside of the luminous
circle made by our camp fires, and there they did not
like to venture. A little strychnine was put into a piece of
meat, and thrown to him, when he soon departed, and we
heard no more of the majestic sneaker.
The Kebrabasa people were now plumper and in better
condition than on our former visits; the harvest had been
abundant; they had plenty to eat and drink, and they were
enjoying life as much as ever they could. At Defwe’s
village, near where the ship lay on her first ascent, we found
two Mfumos or headmen, the son and son-in-law of the former
M