This may be done in various ways—most, if not all of which, we must remember, are used for the detection of other things besides witches. There is the Mabisalila or Mavumbula, the woman who dances herself into a state of frenzy, and reveals the name of the guilty person. She comes to stay at the village which has requisitioned her services, and so gains time to glean all the gossip of the place before pronouncing her opinion, and also to bury the horns during her nightly prowls, ostensibly undertaken for the purpose of spying on the Witches’ Sabbath, and seeing who leaves the village to attend it. She is able to make her investigations quite undisturbed, as no one likes to venture out after dark during her stay, lest he should meet her and be fixed on as the culprit. When her preparations are complete, the people are called together by the sound of the great drum. Then she begins to dance, working up herself and the spectators to a furious pitch of excitement, rushes round, smells their hands to see if she can detect any traces of strange food eaten at the unholy banquet, and at last calls on the guilty person by the name she pretends to have heard him addressed by at the grave. When no one answers, she says ‘So-and-So is known in the village by such and such a name,’ and then leads the way to his house, where the horns are dug up. The enraged people usually lynch the accused on the spot. The ordeal of the mwavi is resorted to when people are suspected either of witchcraft or of some other crime, such as theft; and as it is a regular form of judicial procedure, it is perhaps best to consider it more fully under that heading. Here I need only say that the poison is administered to the suspected person; if he dies, his guilt is established; if he recovers, he is _ipso facto_ acquitted. In some districts the poison used does not cause death, but the guilt or innocence of the accused is decided according to the different symptoms produced. Under the heading of ‘oracles’ we may include a great many different processes of divination, some partaking of a judicial character, such as the following, of which a very curious description is given by an eye-witness, the Rev. H. Rowley. If there was no cheating, it seems to have been a case of what is known as ‘motor automatism.’