We had halted to give the men a rest, and I was having some lunch under the shade of a tree—my practice being to start the day with only a cup of coffee in the early morning, making my lunch about midday my first meal—when two or three natives were brought in, who told me that they had been sent by a big chief, who was also a very powerful witch doctor, named Muga-wa-diga,[[11]] who begged me to come and camp in his village. Of course I was only too glad to meet another friendly chief, and asked them to take me to his village, where we arrived quite early in the afternoon.
[11]. The name Muga-wa-diga means Muga, the son of Diga, the syllable wa being the equivalent of the Russian vitch or the Scandinavian sen, as shown in Peter Petrovitch or Peter Petersen. In the same way, this syllable is prefixed to the names of tribes, as in Wa-Kikuyu (the sons of the Kikuyu), Wakamba, though in the latter case it has now become an integral part of the name.
The chief was an old man, very active for his years, and far more intelligent than the majority of the natives I had met so far. His appearance marked him out as a typical witch doctor, and I had never before seen any chief dressed as he was. His costume was composed chiefly of the skins of wild cats, and he wore a hat made of the skin of the colobus monkey; round his ankles were the usual iron rattles, while two small boys who were with him carried calabashes containing various medicines. He had evidently started off in something of a hurry to meet me on the road, and came up to me without any hesitation, shaking hands in a dignified sort of way, as if the meeting with a white man was an everyday occurrence. After we had exchanged greetings, he conducted me to a suitable place to camp near the village, and also introduced me to his wives and children, which I thought rather extraordinary for a native meeting a white man for the first time. I could see that he was very anxious to make friends with me, and he got his people to assist mine in building the camp, at the same time telling us to be very careful when leaving the village to collect wood or bring in water, as some of the natives were not to be trusted, and he felt himself responsible that no one should get killed while staying at his place.
Of course I was always on my guard, and ordered my men never to go far from the camp without taking some rifles with them, especially as I found that my friend the chief rain-maker had been there before me, spreading rumours of what would happen if they had any dealings with me. But Muga-wa-diga was evidently not on good terms with the rain-maker, being jealous of his power, and this accounted for his being so willing to be friendly towards me.
Finding it a good camp, and being able to obtain plenty of food, I decided to stay there for some days, and in the meantime to try to gather more information about the country and people farther on, while at the same time getting to know more of the people among whom we were camped.
The chief came to my camp nearly every day, and I got a lot of useful information from him. One day he brought his medicines with him, and explained all about them, which gave me a good insight into the art of working magic. Medicine, as we understand it, is not the kind of medicine used by the witch doctor of East Africa, who relies more upon incantations than upon the potency of any drugs to doctor the complaints of those who seek his aid, the ailments he is expected to cure being more of a mental than a physical nature, as, when a native complains that some one has given him poisoned medicine, he really means that some one has put some spell on him to cause something to happen to him. Such is the superstitious nature of the savage that, if one has been told that he is to die at the end of three days, he will actually accept the statement as literally true, and it would have such an effect upon him that, unless the witch doctor could convince him that he had made some medicine powerful enough to counteract the influence of the spell cast over him, he would certainly die at the time stated.
The witch doctor also professed to be able to say what was going to happen to any one who sought the information from him, the mode of procedure in this case being to spread a leopard skin on the ground, and turn out upon it the contents of a calabash containing a lot of stones, lion-claws, arrow-heads, &c. These were counted out in sections—somewhat after the style of the game children play with plum-stones in England—and from the balance remaining after the full number of even sections had been completed he read the signs. An arrow-head perhaps foretold that the inquirer would be killed with an arrow, a lion’s claw that he would be killed by a lion, and so on. They had also medicines for the treatment of physical ailments, and antidotes for poisons.
During my visit to Mombasa I had bought a medicine-chest, which I always carried with me, so I gave the chief a taste of the different tabloids, &c. I found that he was very fond of pepper and salt, and it was surprising to see him take a handful of pepper and eat it up without winking.
The natives were intensely interested in everything I possessed, and were greatly mystified by the trick of drawing the heat from the sun, by means of a lens from my field-glasses focused on their hands, and it was remarkable how some of the warriors would stand the pain without making a sign, letting the flesh burn without appearing to notice it.
When I approached the chief on the question of a Pigasangi, he promised to talk the matter over with his people, and suggested that we might also arrange for the ceremony of blood brotherhood.