This root is very strong, and is scraped into water. The virtue of this root is, that if they put too much of it into water, the person that drinketh it cannot void urine, and so it striketh up into the brain, as though he were drunk, and he falleth down, as though he were dead. And those that fall are counted as guilty, and are punished.[184]
[Purchas adds, in a marginal note:—
“He told me that this root makes the water as bitter as gall (he tasted it), and one root will serve to try one hundred. They which have drunk and made water are cleared, before which, if dizziness take them, they cry: Undoke, Undoke,[185] and presently execute them. See my Relations, b. 7 c. 10, which I writ from his mouth.[186] Neither may this be ascribed to the virtue of the herb, but to the vice of the Devil, a murderer and his instrument, the Ganga or priest.[187] And therefore that conjecture seems unprobable. For how could an ordinary trial of life where are so many so perilous; and therefore curious (more than) spectators, nor perceive this in so long and frequent experience, which costs so many their dearest friends their dearest life? I think rather that this was the transcriber’s conjecture. I remember no such scruple in his narrations to me. Who knows not the Devil’s ambition of Deity, and cruel misanthropy or man-hating? This is his apish imitation of Divinity, and those rites prescribed for trial in the case of jealousy, Numbers, v.[188] In Guinea like trial is made by salt, and also by the Fetisseroes pot. In Benomotapa by water also; in the Maramba trial before [mentioned (see p. 56)], and Motamba trial by hot iron in Angola;[189] the ploughshares in olden times with us; and the trial of witches in the East parts by water, etc., were not unlike in deceivable superstition.”]
[Death and Witchcraft.][190]
In this country none of any account dieth but they kill another for him, for they believe they die not of their own natural death, but that some other hath bewitched them to death. And all those are brought in by the friends of the dead which they suspect, so that many times there come five hundred men and women to take the drink made of the foresaid root Imbonda [mbundu]. They are brought all to the high street or market-place, and there the master of the Imbonda sitteth with his water, and giveth everyone a cop of water by one measure; and they are commanded to walk in a certain place till they make water, and then they be free. But he that cannot urine presently falleth down dead, and all the people, great and small, fall upon him with their knives and beat and cut him into pieces. But I think the witch that giveth the water is partial, and giveth to him whom he will have to die, the strongest water, but no man can perceive it that standeth by. And this is done at the town of Longo almost every week in the year.
§ VII.
Of the Zebra and Hippopotamus; The Portugal Wars in those parts; the Fishing, Grain, and other things remarkable.