In the eye of a Kaffir, any one may be a witch or a wizard--both sexes being equally liable to the impeachment--and on that subject no man can trust his neighbor. A husband has no faith in his own wife, and the father mistrusts his children. As a natural consequence, the faith in charms is coextensive with the belief in witchcraft, and there is scarcely a Kaffir who does not carry with him a whole series of charms, each being destined to avert some particular evil. The charms are furnished to them by the prophets, and as they never are of the least intrinsic value, and are highly paid for, the business of a prophet is rather a lucrative one. Anything will serve as a charm,--bits of bone, scraps of skin, feathers, claws, teeth, roots, and bits of wood. A Kaffir will often have a whole string of such charms hung round his neck, and, to a European, a superstitious Kaffir has often a very ludicrous aspect. One man, who seems to have been peculiarly impressible to such observances, had bedecked his head with pigs’ bristles set straight, so as to stand out on all sides, like the quills of a hedgehog, while round his neck he had strung a quantity of charms, the principal of which were pieces of bone, the head of a snake, the tooth of a young hippopotamus, and a _brass door-handle_. Sometimes the charms are strung on the same thong with the beads, needles, knives, snuff boxes, and other decorations of a Kaffir’s toilet, but generally they are considered worthy of a string to themselves.