In Matabele-land, South Africa, after the defeat and death of the king Lo-Bengula, and the occupation of his country by Great Britain, there was an outbreak, the cause of which was not fully appreciated until it was traced to the witch-doctors, who seized the occasion of the ravages of the rinderpest, which was at that time devastating the cattle of South Africa, to make use of their power. "Naturally they must have felt, more than anybody else, the occupation of Matabele-land by the whites, as it meant the disappearance of their former power. When the rinderpest broke out, they probably persuaded the natives, who understood nothing about an epidemic and attributed whatever ill befalls them to witchcraft, that it was the spirit of Lo-Bengula, which was dissatisfied with them and which caused their cattle to die. To appease Lo-Bengula's spirit, it was necessary to fight the whites. They, the witch-doctors, would make medicine to turn the bullets of the white men into water, so that the Matabele could not be hurt by them."[54] Similarly Great Britain with difficulty has suppressed several risings of the Ashantees, and the late so-called "Hut-Tax" rebellion in Sierra Leone. The actual force of the natives, in organization, arms, and skill, was almost ridiculous in its inferiority as compared with the thoroughly armed and disciplined troops of the British Empire; but the final result, though never doubtful, was attained with much loss of men and funds. The fetich doctor and fetich belief were a _vis a tergo_ with the native horde. Its value as a factor in the contest had not been reckoned on by the foreigner. Whatever motives influenced the native in the contest, in patriotism, cupidity, revenge, bravery, they were minor. The grand influence that nerved his arm and made him perfectly fearless in his assaults against weapons of precision, was his deep conviction, more complete than Christian faith, that he would win. Had not the fetich doctor told him so? Though there had been some apparent failures, in his belief they were only apparent. The real failure was in his own self, his not having followed minutely all the fetich directions. Those directions followed rightly in the next battle, he _could not_ fail. The faith of a Christian does not assure him, in any emergency of life, that he will be successful in his plan; it only certifies him that, whatever be the result, success or failure, of any single act or series of acts in life's drama, his own will must be subordinated to God's, who, if not granting his specific wish to-day, will overrule everything in the final _dénouement_ for his best spiritual good. Similarly the heathen fetich, mixed with the fatalism of Islam, is an explanation of the splendid recklessness with which the followers of the Mahdi flung themselves against the sabres and maxims of General Kitchener's army at Omdurman.