“The moisture caused by this shower was dried up by a scorching sun, and many long weeks followed without a single cloud, and when these did appear they might sometimes be seen, to the great mortification of the conjurer, to discharge their watery treasures at an immense distance. This disappointment was increased when a heavy cloud would pass over with tremendous thunder, but not one drop of rain. There had been several successive years of drought, during which water had not been seen to flow upon the ground; and in that climate, if rain does not fall continuously and in considerable quantities, it is all exhaled in a couple of hours. In digging graves we have found the earth as dry as dust at four or five feet depth, when the surface was saturated with rain. “The women had cultivated extensive fields, but the seed was lying in the soil as it had been thrown from the hand; the cattle were dying for want of pasture, and hundreds of living skeletons were seen going to the fields in quest of unwholesome roots and reptiles, while many were dying with hunger. Our sheep, as before stated, were soon likely to be all devoured, and finding their number daily diminish, we slaughtered the remainder and put the meat in salt, which of course was far from being agreeable in such a climate, and where vegetables were so scarce. “All these circumstances irritated the rain-maker very much; but he was often puzzled to find something on which to lay the blame, for he had exhausted his skill. One night, a small cloud passed over, and the only flash of lightning, from which a heavy peal of thunder burst, struck a tree in the town. Next day, the rain-maker and a number of people assembled to perform the usual ceremony on such an event. It was ascended, and ropes of grass and grass roots were bound round different parts of the trunk, which in the _Acacia giraffa_ is seldom much injured. A limb may be torn off, but of numerous trees of that species which I have seen struck by lightning, the trunk appears to resist its power, as the fluid produces only a stripe or groove along the bark to the ground. When these bandages were made he deposited some of his nostrums, and got quantities of water handed up, which he poured with great solemnity on the wounded tree, while the assembled multitude shouted ‘_Pùla pùla_.’ This done the tree was hewn down, dragged out of the town, and burnt to ashes. Soon after this unmeaning ceremony, he got large bowls of water, with which was mingled an infusion of bulbs. All the men of the town then came together, and passed in succession before him, when he sprinkled each with a zebra’s tail which he dipped in the water.