African Rain-Doctors.
How a belief in imaginary virtues of things may grow out of the evidence of their real virtues, is indicated by Dr. Livingstone, when speaking of the belief in rain-making among the tribes in the heart of South Africa. The African priest and the medicine-man is one and the same, and his chief function is to make the clouds to give out rain. The preparations for this purpose are various: charcoal made of burned bats; lion's hearts, and hairy calculi from the bowels of old cows; serpent skins and vertebræ, and every kind of tuber, bulb, root and plant to be found in the country.
"Although you disbelieve their efficacy in charming the clouds to pour out their refreshing treasures, yet, conscious that civility is useful everywhere, you kindly state that you think they are mistaken as to their power. The rain-doctor selects a particular bulbous root, pounds it, and administers a cold infusion of it to a sheep, which in five minutes afterwards expires in convulsions. Part of the same bulb is converted into smoke and ascends towards the sky: rain follows in a day or two. The inference is obvious."