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CHAPTER XI.

OUR SUPERSTITIONS.

The Little Tugela ghost-An exorcism in Irish-A spiritual victory—The spirit of the storm-A midnight apparition-The demon-dog-The snake at Spion Kop-Tutelary spirits.

PERSONS desirous of information about Africa and its inhabitants will very reasonably expect that I should say something of the superstitions of the people. This in any case I should feel inclined to do, because superstition is a characteristic of national life—has often, in fact, partly moulded national habits-and is quite as much a ruling influence in a community as religion itself. Where there is paganism there will of course be superstition, partaking of the character of the peculiar paganism of the place—cruel and blood spilling, or gentle, dreamy, and imaginative, according as the worshippers have been under the influences of the light and pleasant fancies of a half-poetic priesthood, or the gloom of some harsh and murderous creed. Africa is subject to four principal classes of what might properly be designated as unreasonable belief. There are remnants of Hottentot mythology, full of talking beasts, animated trees, and moving, living, loving flowers, whispering fishes, and clever songbirds, pretty well everywhere amongst the Dutch "volk," whether they be Hottentot or slave descendants. There is the Kafir belief in witchcraft—a terrible irreligion, their faith in which is marked by blood and fire on every page of tribal history. Then there are the superstitions of the descendants of the Dutch and German settlers, amongst which a belief that the earth is often visited by ghosts, for

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comparatively harmless and utterly unreasonable purposes, is the most striking feature. Last of all, there is in the Cape Colony itself, a widespread and mischievous belief in modern magic-the spiritualism of Home and his fellows. The last-named folly has never yet advanced, and I hope never will, to the lands north of the Orange River. The other three are to be found in every part of South Africa, where Bushmen, Hottentot, Bastaard, Bechuana, Kafir, or Dutch are to be met with.

The Dutch believe in ghosts-and yet, in the whole of my long intercourse with them, I have never met but four positive evidences of this belief. These I shall narrate in their order of occurrence, as they will tend to illustrate in a wonderful manner the habits of thought, and the simplicity of my heroes, as the South African Boers undoubtedly are. In 1869, a rumour spread over the county Weenen that the house of a farmer named Van on the banks of the Little Tugela, was the scene of nightly devilries of a harmless but extremely annoying description. The family complained that, when the doors were shut and the windows secured, stones of large size, maize-cobs, and other ponderous matters, began to be pelted about by unseen hands, inside the boundaries of their narrow and well-lighted sittingroom. Everybody knows what the appearance of a South African waggon-team must be. There is a long double row of oxen, carrying yokes to which is attached a mighty chain or rope, a still weightier disselboom (waggon-pole), and the weighty African waggon. The "spooke" at Van used to vary its stone-throwing entertainment by arranging oranges and pumpkins in something like the appearance of the African ox-team-the oranges yoked two and two with thorns, and a pumpkin, or, in some cases, a very large head of Indian corn, attached to them by a chain of straw. This was evidently a hint to the family to go. The manifestations, which at first were only of occasional occurrence, became after a while a cause of nightly dismay and consternation to the poor Boers; and by the beginning of the winter of 1869, the extraordinary occurrences were the theme of every tongue in the wide uplands of Natal. Various propositions were of course made by neighbours for the

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suppression of the ghost, who was alleged to be a woman three years deceased. This dead woman was said to have got up the séance in revenge on her husband for his having married a second time, and permitted the step-mother to illuse the first wife's children.

One evening towards the end of May, a large party, consisting of some of the more intelligent farmers of Weenen and the neighbouring district of Klip River, accompanied by two Britons-M'Cormack (an old soldier), and a friend of the present writer — assembled with guns and horses to exorcise the Evil Presence. The house was situated on a level plain, had no trees within forty paces of it, and had no cellars, the ground underneath never having been disturbed for drainage or any other purposes. It was forty feet long and fourteen feet wide, the walls springing from foundations of solid stone. The roof was well and solidly thatched, was perfect in every respect, being almost new; and it came down fairly and fully over the wall-plates, leaving no possibility of any space being found through which the stone-throwing and annoyance could be conducted from the outside. This whole building was divided inside into but three rooms, of which the centre was nineteen feet, and the others respectively ten and nine feet long. The party-walls dividing these rooms were only eight feet high, pierced with openings from top to bottom. Instead of doors, these openings. from the central into the two side rooms were commonly closed with curtains. For the whole house there were two doors of exit and entry, directly opposite to each other, and opening from the central room into the veld. These were a

front and a back door alternatively, whichever you choose, both fitted into good frames solidly set into the wall, and were, in the proper and protective sense of the word, doors. In this little mansion there were four windows-two in the central room, and one to each of the side rooms. The latter would be better described as holes in the walls than windows. They were very small, and the window - frames or casings were filled with small sheets of muslin instead of glass. These openings, however, when I saw them, were firmly secured on the inside by heavy wooden shutters bolted to the walls. The inside of the house was sparsely

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and poorly furnished. The main room had a small table in a corner, and a bigger one in the centre; a home-made sofa, a barren-looking structure of hard wood and strips of hide; three hard wooden chairs; a waggon - box painted green; over in the corner, by the little table, a soft chair, with a footstool in front of it; and on the table a Brobdingnagian coffee-kettle, with a small fireplace under it always full of glowing charcoal. The two side rooms contained beds, comfortable, but of primitive construction. There were no pictures to obscure the walls, which were, of course, whitewashed. The bare rafters and the solid roof were, as usual, everywhere open to and visible from the inside of the house, there being no ceilings. The floor was of hardened ant-heap, level and well beaten, and was smeared out every day with a paste or soap of bois-de-vache. On this floor, so washed or smeared out, were everywhere visible the circling traces left by the laborious hands that did this work without any assistance from brush, besom, or other artificial scrubber.

When once inside the house, and the doors and windows properly fastened, it would seem as if the inhabitants were perfectly free from any molestation from the outside, and could readily see and detect, without difficulty, any attempt that might be made to play tricks upon them by persons within. There was no fireplace or kitchen-range, all the cooking being carried on at an outside kitchen. On the arrival of the party of investigators and exorcists, an armed watch was placed around the house outside. This consisted of men quick of eye, and rapid to detect the approach of even the smallest animal, and to whom every quiver of a leaf or wave of the grass had an intelligible significance. The guard being posted, seven men entered the house and carefully fastened up all the doors and windows. There were two servants in the house, who were taken charge of and placed, sitting, between the knees of two powerful and watchful men. The family were requested to sit under the centre table, which they did. The candles were lighted, and, in deep silence, the watch was commenced. I have omitted to mention that the moon was almost at the full; there were no clouds, and the outside guards could see plainly every mark and flaw, every knot and nail-hole, in the whitewashed

walls of the exterior of the haunted cottage. Ten minutes after the arrival of the guests, the séance commenced by the fall of half-a-dozen pomegranates on to the table. This was succeeded by a shower of gravel, the small stones of which I had the curiosity to inspect. No pebbles of a similar nature were to be found within ten miles of the place. One of the guards got up to examine the pomegranates. He had no sooner left his chair than it was flung with great violence after him; then lumps of ironstone, the smallest of which weighed ten pounds, began dropping from unexpected places, and a mass of clay appeared to tumble through the roof, breaking and scattering about the floor as if it had come from a considerable height. The remarkable feature about the whole affair was, that not one missile struck or injured any of the large party now assembled in the small room. Their excitement was increased by hearing a violent banging at one of the shuttered openings, but which, as we afterwards learned, attracted no attention from the outside guard.

M'Cormack, who is still a living witness to the facts of this entertainment, being, after his own fashion, a pious man, determined to show the power of his faith and the strength of the exorcisms at his command. He stood up with uncovered head, and boldly addressed the ghost in Irish, ordering it in the most solemn manner, and by the most sacred influences known to Christians, to retire to where the wicked ought to cease from troubling, and the weary are presumed-by all but spiritualists-to take their rest. Whether, led on by his subject, he went too far or not, I cannot say he was stopped in the midst of a torrent of eloquence by what he afterwards described as “a lick from a three-year-old;" in fact, a "young paving-stone" brought him to his senses and his seat at the same time. This violent counter-attack was too much for the visitors; already in a state of high alarm, they hastily released their prisoners, flung open the doors, and dashed out into the moonlight, followed by showers of stones, mealy cobs, potatoes, pomegranates, oranges, and all the handy weapons of South African spiritual warfare that the deceased had accumulated --where? In the still moonlight they saw their watchful