[Sidenote: Magical powers attributed to kings in Africa.] Similarly in Africa kings are commonly supposed to be endowed with a magical power of making the rain to fall and the crops to grow: drought and famine are set down to the weakness or ill-will of the king, and accordingly he is punished, deposed, or put to death.[12.3] To take two or three instances out of many, a writer of the eighteenth century speaks as follows of the kingdom of Loango in West Africa: [Sidenote: The king of Loango.] “The government with these people is purely despotic. They say their lives and goods belong to the king; that he may dispose of and deprive them of them when he pleases, without form of process, and without their having anything to complain of. In his presence they pay marks of respect which resemble adoration. The individuals of the lower classes are persuaded that his power is not confined to the earth, and that he has credit enough to make rain fall from heaven: hence they fail not, when a continuance of drought makes them fearful about the harvest, to represent to him that if he does not take care to water the lands of his kingdom, they will die of hunger, and will find it impossible to make him the usual presents. The king, to satisfy the people, without however compromising himself with heaven, {13} devolves the affair on one of his ministers, to whom he gives orders to cause to fall without delay upon the plains as much rain as is wanted to fertilize them. When the minister sees a cloud which he presumes must shed rain, he shews himself in public, as if to exercise the orders of his prince. The women and children troop around him, crying with all their might, _Give us rain, give us rain_: and he promises them some.”[13.1] The king of Loango, says another old writer, “is honoured among them as though he were a God: and is called _Sambee_ and _Pango_, which mean God. They believe he can let them have rain when he likes; and once a year, in December, which is the time they want rain, the people come to beg of him to grant it to them, on this occasion they make him presents, and none come empty-handed.” On a day appointed, when the chiefs with their troops had assembled in warlike array, the drums used to beat and the horns to sound, and the king shot arrows into the air, which was believed to bring down the rain.[13.2] On the other side of Africa a similar state of things is reported by the old Portuguese historian Dos Santos. [Sidenote: The king of Sofala.] He says: “The king of all these lands of the interior and of the river of Sofala is a woolly-haired Kaffir, a heathen who adores nothing whatever, and has no knowledge of God; on the contrary, he esteems himself the god of all his lands, and is so looked upon and reverenced by his subjects.” “When they suffer necessity or scarcity they have recourse to the king, firmly believing that he can give them all that they desire or have need of, and can obtain anything from his dead predecessors, with