After M’tesa had received his white visitor, he suddenly rose and retired after the royal custom, and, as etiquette did not permit him to eat until he had seen his visitors, he took the opportunity of breaking his fast.
Round the king, as he sits on his grass-covered throne, are his councillors and officers, squatted on the ground, with their dresses drawn tightly around them, and partly seated on the royal leopard skins which are strewed on the ground. There is also a large drum, decorated with little bells strung on wire arches, and some smaller drums, covered with beads and cowrie shells, worked into various patterns. Outside the inner circle sit the ordinary officers, and while the king is present not a word is spoken, lest he should take offence at it; and not an eye is lifted, lest a casual glance might fall on one of the king’s women, and be the precursor of a cruel death.
The Waganda are much given to superstition, and have a most implicit faith in charms. The king is very rich in charms, and, whenever he holds his court, has vast numbers of them suspended behind him, besides those which he carries on his person. These charms are made of almost anything that the magician chooses to select. Horns, filled with magic powder, are perhaps the most common, and these are slung on the neck or tied on the head if small, and kept in the huts if large.
Their great object of superstitious dread is a sort of water-spirit, which is supposed to inhabit the lake, and to wreak his vengeance upon those who disturb him. Like the water-spirits of the Rhine, this goblin has supreme jurisdiction, not only on the lake itself, but in all rivers that communicate with it; and the people are so afraid of this aquatic demon, that they would not allow a sounding-line to be thrown into the water, lest perchance the weight should happen to hit the water-spirit and enrage him. The name of this spirit is M’gussa, and he communicates with the people by means of his own special minister or priest, who lives on an island, and is held in nearly as much awe as his master.
M’tesa once took Captain Speke with him to see the magician. He took also a number of his wives and attendants, and it was very amusing, when they reached the boats, to see all the occupants jump into the water, ducking their heads so as to avoid seeing the royal women, a stray glance being sure to incur immediate death. They proceeded to the island on which the wizard lived.
“Proceeding now through the trees of this beautiful island, we next turned into the hut of the M’gussa’s familiar, which at the further end was decorated with many mystic symbols, among them a paddle, the badge of high office; and for some time we sat chatting, when pombé was brought, and the spiritual medium arrived. He was dressed Wichwézi fashion, with a little white goatskin apron, adorned with various charms, and used a paddle for a walking-stick. He was not an old man, though he articled to be so, walking very slowly and deliberately, coughing asthmatically, glimmering with his eyes, and mumbling like a witch. With much affected difficulty he sat at the end of the hut, beside the symbols alluded to, and continued his coughing full half an hour, when his wife came in in the same manner, without saying a word, and assumed the same affected style.
“The king jokingly looked at me and laughed, and then at these strange creatures by turns, as much as to say, ‘What do you think of them?’ but no voice was heard, save that of the old wife, who croaked like a frog for water, and, when some was brought, croaked again because it was not the purest of the lake’s produce—had the first cup changed, wetted her lips with the second, and hobbled away in the same manner as she had come.”
On their pathways and roads, which are very numerous and well kept, they occasionally place a long stick in the ground, with a shell or other charm on the top, or suspend the shell on the overhanging branch of a tree. Similar wands, on a smaller scale, are kept in the houses, and bits of feathers, rushes, and other articles are tied behind the door. Snake-skin is of course much used in making these charms, and a square piece of this article is hung round the neck of almost every man of this country.
The religion of the Waganda is of course one inspired by terror, and not by love, the object of all their religious rites being to avert the anger of malignant spirits. Every new moon has its own peculiar worship, which is conducted by banging drums, replenishing the magic horns, and other ceremonies too long to describe. The most terrible of their rites is that of human sacrifice, which is usually employed when the king desires to look into the future.
The victim is always a child, and the sacrifice is conducted in a most cruel manner. Having discovered by his incantations that a neighbor is projecting war, the magician flays a young child, and lays the bleeding body in the path on which the soldiers pass to battle. Each warrior steps over the bleeding body, and thereby is supposed to procure immunity for himself in the approaching battle. When the king makes war, his chief magician uses a still more cruel mode of divination. He takes a large earthen pot, half fills it with water, and then places it over the fireplace. On the mouth of the pot he lays a small platform of crossed sticks, and having bound a young child and a fowl, he lays them on the platform, covering them with another pot, which he inverts over them. The fire is then lighted, and suffered to burn for a given time, when the upper pot is removed, and the victims inspected. If they should both be dead, it is taken as a sign that the war must be deferred for the present; but if either should be alive, war may be made at once.