The poison so often referred to in connection with native trials is made from the bark of the mwai tree, which grows plentifully throughout the country. The dose is about two gills, and is prepared by a pounder of poison (1). The accused, it is said, has a voice in the selection of the pounder, but so implicitly is the ordeal believed in that the natives think it is of little consequence who “pounds” it; still most tribes seem to have a milder concoction for trivial offences. The drug may be taken by proxy—it may be administered to a dog or a fowl or some animal representing the accused. In this case the animal is tied by a string to the criminal. If it survive, the accused is innocent, if it die, he is guilty. This method of administering the ordeal is more humane, and is allowed in smaller offences. It is much used by the natives that live near the coast. Indeed, the inhabitants of Quilimane believe in the ordeal as implicitly as the tribes of the interior, and although they have been in contact with Europeans for centuries, they were accustomed when called before a Portuguese judge to swear on the mwai instead of the Bible. 106. WITCHCRAFT (USAWI.) We have now described so many native customs that it is time to set our examination paper that the reader may satisfy himself as to his progress in African lore. We therefore propose the following question, “When a man is killed by a wild beast, do the natives think he died by the hand of God?” If the reader can answer this, he has studied the subject with profit, and he would be able to answer many similar questions. For those who are doubtful we shall submit our own view. In the first place, the question as Christians understand it, is quite unintelligible to the native. We have reason to believe that in the times of his philosophising, the idea of a Supreme Being rises before his mind, but that Being is to him “a God afar off” who takes nothing to do with the ordinary course of events, and from whose hand, therefore, death or misfortune never comes. We must try then to interpret the question as the native does (3), and we are thus led to enquire whether death comes from the hand of the Departed Spirits. Now undoubtedly these spirits have great power. Under their auspices journeys are successful, by their assemblies famine is averted, through their influence death is driven away. Yet it is not so much their business either to cause evil or to prevent it, as to indicate whether evil be coming. The departed spirit may have to answer a question like this, “_If_ Saul come down, and _if_ I remain here, will the men of Keilah deliver me up?” Now by giving a false answer, the spirit may bring about the death of his worshippers. Yet it is not the spirit that kills them—the real cause of all such mischief in this lower world is the Bewitcher. When we remark that the god is quite as much to blame, the natives say, “There is no use of blaming the god. _He did not set the horns._” It is on the Bewitcher