Indeed not only were Napoleon and his mother superstitious, but the whole Bonaparte family were believers in fate. Napoleon III. says in his will, "With regard to my son" (the late Prince Imperial, who perished at the hands of Zulus), "let him keep, as a talisman, the seal attached to my watch." True to the traditions of his family, the young Prince put trust in amulets. When the Prince's body was discovered (here we have a double case of superstition), it lay stripped of all its clothing, but there were left with the body a locket and a gold amulet, admittedly the seal bequeathed to him by his Imperial father, as the Zulus were afraid they were charms—articles they stand in great dread of.
Thinking of Prince Napoleon's untimely death, brings the Zulu character to remembrance. Among the Zulus a belief prevails that kindly and angry spirits hover around them—the former endeavouring to do them good; the latter trying to do them harm. Zulus also believe in divine smoke, witchcraft, and dreams. Whenever a charge of witchcraft is made against any one, no mercy is shown him. Such an accusation affords a pretext to a king or chief for getting rid of an obnoxious person and acquiring his substance. The Inyanga, like our witch-finder of old, has no difficulty in bringing home guilt to the unfortunate accused. A Zulu judge, before pronouncing sentence, pretends that he consults the divine oracles of his nation. When a Zulu sneezes he says, "I am blessed, and the ancestral spirit is with me." So he praises the family manes, and ends by asking blessings, such as cattle and wives.
In September 1879 official news came from Sir Garnet Wolseley that King Cetewayo had been captured, that the Zulu war had come to an end, and that the following were among the terms of peace, signed by the chiefs of Zululand: "I will not tolerate the employment of witch doctors, or the practice known as smelling out, or any practices of witchcraft."
Not unfrequently the representatives of Great Britain, in concluding peace with heathen nations, have, as in the case of the Zulus, to respect the superstitious notions of the people they have to deal with, so as to make the agreement more binding in the minds of the heathen contracting parties.
On one occasion the Ashantees put up a fetish to stop the advance of the British army. It consisted of a kid transfixed through the throat and heart, and staked to the ground; six cooking-pots, inverted, were stuck on stakes round the kid, and, a few feet from it, another kid was found buried: this, according to Ashantee custom, had been buried alive. A similar fetish had been put up at a river near Moinsey to stop the British troops. The advancing army found almost every turn of the road to Coomassie strewn with fetish documents. Near Fommanah nearly every tree had a white rag fastened to it as a charm. On the King hearing of the British victory, he went to pour libation to the spirits of his ancestors, and to ask their assistance against the enemies of his country.
The Shah of Persia has numerous talismans, exceeding two hundred in number. We give details of four of them. One is a gold star, supposed to have been possessed by the legendary Rustem. It is called Merzoum, and has the reputation of making conspirators immediately confess. When the Shah's brother was accused of treason some time since, the star was shown him, and, terrified and overcome by remorse, he avowed his iniquities. His confession was, of course, attributed to its efficacy. He was banished. The next important talisman is a cube of amber, which, we are told, fell from heaven in Mohammed's time. It is supposed to render the Shah invulnerable, and he wears it about his neck. Another is a little box of gold, set in emeralds, and blessed by the Prophet. It renders the Royal Family invisible as long as they are celibates. Another is a diamond set in one of the Shah's scimitars, which renders its possessor invincible; and there is also a dagger with the same property, but it is ordained that those who use it shall perish by it. It is therefore carefully kept shut up in a sandal-wood box, on which is engraved a verse of the Koran.
As of old, superstition prevails all over India. Semi-religious ceremonies are gone through in seasons of drought, to procure rain. At other times means are taken to propitiate the gods, to subdue enemies, and to secure good fortune to individuals, households, and communities. There are Indian princes who regularly consult their fortune-tellers regarding public and private affairs.
A curious bathing fair was held at Ajudhia, in Oude, in February 1878. When a peculiar conjunction of the planets takes place (which occurs only once in eighty years), the natives rush in crowds to the river, as they believe that if they manage to bathe and go through certain ceremonies in four minutes and a half, they will obtain the remission of their own sins and those of millions of their ancestors. On this occasion the rush to the river turned out so great that numbers were trodden under foot, and sixty-five persons lost their lives.
The mysterious lights in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which are believed by mariners to be warnings of great tempests and shipwreck, were unusually brilliant in 1878. It is said to be a fact, established by the experience of a century, that when these lights blaze brightly in the summer nights, the phenomena are invariably followed by great storms. They give the appearance to spectators on the shore of a ship on fire. The fire itself seems to consist of blue and yellow flames, now dancing high above the water, and then flickering, paling, and dying out, only to spring up again with fresh brilliancy. If a boat approaches, it flits away, moving further out, and is pursued in vain. The lights are plainly visible from the shore from midnight until two in the morning. They appear to come from the sea shoreward, and at dawn retire gradually, and are lost in the morning mist. Paradis, the French pilot, who took charge of the British Fleet under Admiral Sir Hovenden Walker when it sailed up the St. Lawrence to seize Quebec in 1711, declared he saw one of these lights before that armada was shattered by a dreadful gale on the 22d of August. The light, he said, danced before his vessel all the way up the gulf. Every great wreck that has taken place there since Sir Hovenden Walker's calamity has been preceded, if tradition is to be believed, by these mysterious lights, and they have thus warned the mariner of fatal storms.
In July last (1879) a woman, known as the Queen of Hearts, who had attained the age of one hundred years, and who had been known for three quarters of a century as a fortune-teller, died in Vienna. Apparently gifted with the faculty of prescience, intimately acquainted with the shuffling of cards, deeply learned in the lore of the prophetic lines traced by the graver of Fate upon human hands and feet, this lady devoted her days to the unravelling of the tangled secrets of the future, charging those whose curiosity prompted them to pry into the regions of the unknown, five ducats per revelation. As many of the leading ladies of the Austrian aristocracy were among her clients, and the accuracy of her forecasts having earned for her a mighty reputation throughout the realms of the Hapsburgs, she contrived to amass a handsome fortune. "Herz-Dame" was a person of extraordinary acumen, and a physiognomist of the highest order. Her sources of private information were numerous, and her ramifications are believed to have permeated every class of Austrian society.