"Do you not see how he is trembling now?"We told them to ask him to change himself at once into a lion, and we would give him a cloth for the performance."Oh no," replied they; "if we tell him so, he may change himself and come when we are asleep and kill us."Having similar superstitions at home, they readily became as firm believers in the Pondoro as the natives of the village.We were told that he assumes the form of a lion and remains in the woods 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.
It 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 him roundly during his brief intervals of silence."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 truly; 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 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 chief.A sister's son has much more chance of succeeding to a chieftainship than the chief's own offspring, it being unquestionable that the sister's child has the family blood.The men are all marked across the nose and up the middle of the forehead with short horizontal bars or cicatrices; and a single brass earring of two or three inches diameter, like the ancient Egyptian, is worn by the men.
Some wear the hair long like the ancient Assyrians and Egyptians, and a few have eyes with the downward and inward slant of the Chinese.
