A prophet who has distinguished himself as a rain-maker is soon known far and wide, and does not restrict his practice to his own district. Potentates from all parts of the country send for him when the drought continues, and their own prophets fail to produce rain. In this, as in other countries, the prophet has more honor in another land than in his own, and the confidence placed in him is boundless. This confidence is grounded on the fact that a rain-maker from a distant land will often produce rain when others at home have failed. The reason is simple enough, though the Kaffirs do not see it. By the time that the whole series of native prophets have gone through their incantations, the time of drought is comparatively near to a close; and, if the prophet can only manage to stave off the actual production of rain for a few days, he has a reasonable chance of success, as every hour is a positive gain to him. It is needless to mention that the Kaffirs are well acquainted with the signs of the weather, as is always the case with those who live much in the open air. The prophets, evidently, are more weather-wise than the generality of their race, and, however much a rain-maker may believe in himself, he never willingly undertakes a commission when the signs of the sky portend a continuance of drought. Should he be absolutely forced into undertaking the business, his only hope of escape from the dilemma is to procrastinate as much as possible, while at the same time he keeps the people amused. The most common mode of procrastination is by requesting certain articles, which he knows are almost unattainable, and saying that until he has them his incantations will have no effect. Mr. Moffatt narrates a very amusing instance of the shifts to which a prophet is sometimes put, when the rain will not fall, and when he is forced to invoke it. “The rain-maker found the clouds in our country rather harder to manage than those he had left. He complained that secret rogues were disobeying his proclamations. When urged to make repeated trials, he would reply, ‘You only give me sheep and goats to kill, therefore I can only make goat-rain; give me for slaughter oxen, and I shall let you see ox-rain.’ One day, as he was taking a sound sleep, a shower fell, on which one of the principal men entered his house to congratulate him, but to his utter amazement found him totally insensible to what was transpiring. ‘Hélaka rare!’ (Hallo, by my father!) ‘I thought you were making rain,’ said the intruder, when, arising from his slumbers, and seeing his wife sitting on the floor shaking a milk-sack in order to obtain a little butter to anoint her hair, he replied, pointing to the operation of churning, ‘Do you not see my wife churning rain as fast as she can?’ This reply gave entire satisfaction, and it presently spread through the length and breadth of the town, that the rain-maker had churned the shower out of a milk-sack.