“This woman may be styled a queen of witches, and her appearance bespeaks her craft. Large coils of entrails stuffed with fat were suspended round her neck; while her thick and tangled hair, stuck over in all directions with the gall-bladders of animals, gave to her tall figure a very singularly wild and grotesque appearance. One of her devices, which occurred about six months ago, is too characteristic to be omitted. Tpāi had assembled his army, and was in the act of going out to war, a project which, for some reason, she thought it necessary to oppose. Finding that all her dissuasions were ineffectual, she suddenly quitted the place, and, accompanied only by a little girl, entirely concealed herself from observation. At the expiration of three or four days, she as mysteriously returned; and holding her side, apparently bleeding from an assagai-wound, pretended to have been received, in her absence, from the spirit of her late husband Maddegān, she presented herself before Tpāi. ‘Your brother’s spirit,’ she exclaimed, ‘has met me, and here is the wound he has made in my side with an assagai; he reproached me for remaining with people who had treated me so ill.’ Tpāi, either willingly or actually imposed upon by this strange occurrence, countermanded the army; and, if we are to credit the good people in these parts, the wound immediately healed! For several months subsequent to this period, she took it into her head to crawl about upon her hands and knees; and it is only lately, I understand, that she has resumed her station in society as a biped.” One of the female prophets had a curious method of discovering an “evil-doer.” She came leaping into the ring of assembled Kaffirs, with great bounds of which a woman seems hardly capable. It is possible that she previously made use of some preparation which had an exciting effect on the brain, and assisted in working herself up to a pitch of terrible frenzy. With her person decorated with snakes, skulls, heads and claws of birds, and other strange objects--with her magic rattle in one hand, and her staff of office in the other--she flew about the circle with such erratic rapidity that the eye could scarcely follow her movements, and no one could in the least anticipate what she would do next. Her eyes seemed starting from her head, foam flew from her clenched jaws, while at intervals she uttered frantic shrieks and yells that seemed scarcely to belong to humanity. In short, her appearance was as terrible as can well be imagined, and sure to inspire awe in the simple-minded and superstitious audience which surrounded her. She did not go through the usual process of smelling and crawling, but pursued her erratic course about the ring, striking with her wand of office the man who happened to be within its reach, and running off with an incredible swiftness.