The sore rapidly grows worse till death follows.​[765] Peasants of northern India commonly attribute all sorts of pains and sores to the machinations of a witch or sorcerer who has meddled with their footprints.​[766] For example, with the Chero, a Dravidian race of labourers in the hill country of Mirzapur, a favourite mode of harming an enemy is to measure his footprints in the dust with a straw and then mutter a spell over them; that brings on wounds and sores in his feet.​[767] Such magical operations have been familiar to the Hindoos from of old. In the _Kausika Sutra_, a book of sorcery, it is directed that, while your foe is walking southward, you should make cuts in his footprint with the leaf of a certain tree or with the blade of an axe (it is not quite clear which is to be used); then you must tie dust from the footprint in the leaf of a certain tree (_Butea frondosa_) and throw it into a frying-pan; if it crackles in the pan, your enemy is undone.​[768] Another old Hindoo charm was to obtain earth from the footprint of a beleaguered king and scatter it in the wind.​[769] The Herero of South Africa take earth from the footprints of a lion and throw it on the track of an enemy, with the wish, “May the lion kill you.”​[770] The Ovambo of the same region believe that they can be bewitched by an enemy through the dust or sand {p210} of their footprints. Hence a man who has special reason to dread the spite of a foe will carefully efface his footprints with a branch as fast as he makes them.​[771] The Ewe-speaking people of West Africa fancy they can drive an enemy mad by throwing a magic powder on his footprints.​[772] Among the Shuswap and Carrier Indians of North-west America shamans used to bewitch a man by taking earth from the spot on which he had stood and placing it in their medicine-bags; then their victim fell sick or died.​[773] In North Africa the magic of the footprints is sometimes used for more amiable purposes. A woman who wishes to attach her husband or lover to herself will take earth from the print of his right foot, tie it up with some of his hairs in a packet, and wear the packet next her skin.​[774] [Sidenote: Contagious magic of footprints in Europe.]