Quite amazing is the fear which exists among the Bongo about ghosts, whose abode is said to be in the shadowy darkness of the woods. Spirits, devils, and witches have the general appellation of “bitaboh;” wood-goblins being specially called “ronga.” Comprehended under the same term are all the bats (especially the Megaderma frons, which flutters about from tree to tree in broad daylight), as likewise are owls of every kind (Strix leucotis and Strix capensis being here the chief); and besides these the Ndorr (Galago senegalensis), a kind of pseudo-simia, with great red eyes and erect ears, which drags out a gloomy existence in the cavities of hollow trees. There are, too, prowling beasts of night, for which they entertain the utmost dread, regarding them with superstitious awe. To ward off the evil influences of these spirits, the Bongo are acquainted with no other means except the magical roots in which the professional sorcerers trade, in a similar way as the Mohammedan priests of the Soudan in their amulets and sentences from the Koran. Very seldom are any attempts made to expel the spirits by the means of exorcism, which is turned to great account by the Dinka magicians. The institution of the “Cogyoor” is here called “belomah,” but whenever it is necessary to have an invocation over a sick patient, they more often than not send for a professional wizard from the neighbouring Dinka.
Good spirits are quite unrecognised, and, according to the general negro idea, no benefit can ever come from a spirit at all. They affirm that the only thing they know about spirits is that they do mischief, and certain it is that they have no conception either of there being a Creator, or any kind and ruling power above. They assert that there is no other resource for obtaining communication with spirits, except by means of certain roots, which may be of service likewise in employing the powers of evil to inflict injury on others. To their knowledge of this magic may be attributed much of the influence which the native chiefs, independently of their authorised rule, exercise over the mass of the people in their districts. This may be witnessed among the Bary on the Bahr-el-Gebel, and a hundred other tribes, who yield the greatest deference to the controllers or captains of their communities. The practice of fetching down rain is never pretended to by the Bongo chiefs, and may be said to be absolutely unknown; but probably this may rise from the climate so rarely making it necessary to put their skill in this respect to the test.
BELIEF IN WITCHES.
All the very old people of either sex, but especially the old women, are exposed to the suspicion of allying themselves to wicked spirits, for the purpose of effecting the injury and detriment of others. Old folks, so the Bongo maintain, wander through the forest-glades at night, and have only to secure the proper roots, and then they may apparently be lying calmly in their huts, whilst in reality they are taking counsel with the spirits of mischief how they can best bring their neighbours to death and destruction. They dig for roots, it is continually said, that they may have the means of poisoning those around them. Whenever any case of sudden death occurs, the aged people are held responsible, and nothing, it is taken for granted, could be more certain than that a robust man, except he were starved, would not die. Woe to the old crones, then, in whose house the suspected herbs and roots are found! though they be father or mother, they have no chance of escape.
A genuine and downright belief in witches has long been and still continues as deeply seated here as in any spot upon the face of the earth, and nowhere are prosecutions more continually being instituted against them. As matter of fact, I can affirm that really aged folks among the Bongo are comparatively scarce, and that the number of grey-headed people is, by contrast, surprisingly large amongst the neighbouring race of the Dyoor, who put no faith at all in any witchcraft. The Nubians are not only open to superstitions of their own, but confirm the Bongo in all of theirs. In the Eastern Soudan, which is a Mohammedan country, the conversation will constantly turn upon the “sáhara” (i. e., the witches), and no comparison is more frequent than that which likens the old women to hyænas: in fact, many of the people hold hard and fast to the conviction that the witches are capable of going out at night, and taking up their quarters inside the bodies of these detestable brutes, without any one being aware of what is happening. It chanced, during my stay in Gallabat, that I killed one out of a herd of hyænas that was infesting the district; my fate, in consequence, was to be loaded with reproaches on the part of the Sheikh, who informed me that his mother was a “hyæna-woman,” and that I might, for all I could tell, have shot her. After this I was not so surprised as might be expected when Idrees, the governor of Ghattas’s Seriba, boasted in my presence of his conflicts with witches, bragging that in one day he had had half a dozen of them executed. An occasion shortly afterwards arose, when Idrees was contemplating putting two old women to death at the desire of some Bongo, and the only scheme I could devise to make him desist from his purpose, was by threatening him that, in the event of the women being executed, I would poison his water-springs.
But, in this dread of witches, the whole superstition of the Bongo culminates and exhausts itself; and we Europeans may well ask what real right have we, with all our advancement in knowledge, to presume to reproach them? We cannot resist the impression that these poor Bongo are infinitely more free from hundreds of superstitious fallacies than many of those who boast of their civilization; much more so, for instance, than the Mohammedans of the Soudan, where the idlest of superstitions prevail in every household. Let nature be free, and the germs of energy in man’s spirit will develop themselves, without overstepping their proper limits, in trustful dependence upon the presiding spirit which controls all thought. That the spirit of man, moreover, revolves in a circle, is demonstrated by the old man becoming again a child. A philosopher might fairly speculate (in the spirit of Bernardin de St. Pierre, when he advocated a worship of Nature) whether this land would not have been happier if the Moslems had never set foot upon its soil. They brought a religion that was destitute of morality; they introduced contagion rather than knowledge; they even suppressed the true doctrines of Mohammed their prophet, which would have enfranchised the very people whom they oppressed, and have raised them to a condition of brotherhood, and of equality.
BONGO SURGERY.
The method of proceeding among the Bongo with the sick and wounded is invariably of the very simplest character. When the disorder is internal, and the origin cannot be detected, the treatment consists merely in liberal applications of very hot water. The patient is stretched upon the ground, and sprinkled by means of leafy boughs with boiling water from vessels that are placed close by. Somewhat more expert is their proceeding in the case of the wounded. It once chanced that I saw a group of sufferers brought back from one of the raids that had been made into the territory of the Dinka. The wounds had nearly all been inflicted by the lances of the adversary. With remarkable fortitude the patients all submitted to the practice of the country, which consisted in the introduction of a number of setons, made of the strong and fibrous bast of the grewia, into the injured parts, in order to reduce the inflammation. Amongst others, I saw a knee, which was immensely swollen, subject to the operation of being pierced in every direction by setons of this sort, until it was larded like a roast hare. With the exception of red ochre the Bongo, like most of their neighbours, are not acquainted with any mineral which they can apply to a wound, either as a reduceut or an antiseptic. As medicines to accelerate the natural processes of cure, they make use of the astringent bitter barks of certain trees like the Hymenocardia, the Butyrospermum, and the Prosopis, which are here known as the “gere,” the “kor,” and the “göll.” Syphilis, which now makes its insidious progress, was quite unknown amongst these poor savages previous to the settlement amongst them of the Nubians, and against its mischief the only specific employed is the bitter bark of the Heddo-tree (Anogeissus), one, however, which undoubtedly is utterly useless for the purpose.
The misshapen and crippled are entirely unknown amongst these unsophisticated children of Nature. But in a country where, even with the best attention on the part of a mother, every child must be exposed to the perils which necessarily are associated with existence in a wilderness, how should it be possible for a cripple to stand out the battle of life? As freaks of nature, every now and then there may be seen some dwarfs, and I presume that some mutes may occasionally be found, as there is a word (“mabang”) in their language to express the defect in the faculty of speech.
The insane (“bindahko”) are shackled hand and foot; and avowedly with the design of cooling and soothing their passions, they are thrown into the river, where they are immersed by practised swimmers. If this remedy should prove of no effect, the patient is put into confinement, and dieted by the relatives; but generally the lot of a maniac is far happier than that which befalls an aged man, however innocent. To maintain the strength of invalids, certain kinds of flesh are prescribed, and a particular value is attributed to the flesh of the Gullukoo (Tmetoceros abyssinicus), a kind of rhinoceros hornbill, which has a detestable flavour, as odious as hemlock.