An Englishman who had lived for some time in the Makanga country told me that these people credit the were-hyena with a human wife, who lives in a village and performs the ordinary work of a native woman by day, but by night opens the door of the goat-kraal to admit her husband, and then goes away into the bush with him to join in the feast. A goat was carried off one night from the village near which the narrator lived, and the people showed him, in the morning, the hyena’s tracks, and, running parallel with them, the print of bare human feet. It was in vain to point out that some one might have attempted to pursue the hyena and rescue his prey, or, at any rate, have run out to see what had happened—they were positive that the footprints were those of the hyena’s wife. Rats, too, may be wizards in animal shape, which is a reason for their nibbling the toes of sleepers. Watching the grass-fires one night towards the end of the dry season, I remember seeing a strange, sudden blaze on Nyambadwe Hill; the flames rushing to an enormous height—whether from some change of wind, or because they had caught a large dead tree, I do not know. I happened to speak of this next day to an old man (a good-for-nothing old man he was, by the bye, though that is nothing to the present purpose), and he said that he had looked out of his hut and seen it too, remarking, cryptically, that it was due to _afiti_. He went on to tell me that he sometimes heard them passing by at night—they flew over the tree-tops with a great whirring of wings. In fact, it appeared that they could do ‘most anything.’ The boys, who dared not go out at night for fear of _afiti_, asserted that they carried a light which you could see afar off, but put it out when you came near them, and that they could make themselves large and small instantaneously. Some held that it was good to pluck up heart and address them; others, that if you spoke to them, you would become dumb like Mœris, when the wolf saw him first. I did not at the time understand the precise connection between the witches and the fire; but it appears that the grave itself becomes luminous when they gather there. ‘When a fire is seen on a distant hill, where no fire can be accounted for’—that is the place of their assembly. They call the dead man by his childish name (which none ever uses after he has once passed through the mysteries), and he cannot choose but come out of the grave—then they tear him limb from limb and eat him. When you consider that people believe this, not as a piece of curious folk-lore, but as a solid conviction forming part of everyday life, it is hardly surprising that they think no treatment too bad for the witches—if they can be caught.