WITCH DOCTORS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8158, 12 June 1906, Page 7

WITCH DOCTORS.

A correspondent of the Daily Mail gives a very plain and unromantic aooount of the modern witch-doctors ini South Africa. He Bays he has known a great many gentlemen of the profession, from mighty rain-makere, who claimed to control the seasons, down to petty local practitioners, -who could do nothing more than "SMELL OUT WIZARDS," and supply poisons, and there was never any one of them for whom he hod a word of approbation. "I* yna lived among the kraals," he says, "the picture you carry away will be very different from that which you had before. The feataers, tbe shields, the assegais, the big, stalwart figures, will have vanished, and in THEIR PLACE YOU WILL SEE a dozen shrunken old men, huddled up in greasy blankets, squatting round a smoked little fire under the shade of a big wild-flg tree, taking snuff with trembling fingers', while they plot to poison their neighbours. And the central figure will PROBABLY BE ONE even more shrunken and palsied than tbe rest, a bestial, crafty old villian, with a string of charms and small buck horns .round hiß neck, a figure you always itched to shoot —thelooal witch-dootor." Witchcraft, we are told, is the main interest of the katflr's life, and moat OP HIS CONVERSATION IS OP uneasy spirits, Qt wizards, or murdered people. And the influence of the witch-dootor is consequently enormouß. Whenever there is trouble in a village, says the correspondent, it Is always SAFE TO BLAME THE WITCH- < DOCTOR because "if he did not actually plan it, he certainly assisted in the later stages." To this evil person, again may be referred with confidence every case of poisoning among the kaffire, and every attack upon the white farmer and his property. The kafflrs mention suoh incidents commonly as the work of tbe spirits, and as the witob-dootor is the only human being in communication with the ghosts of the departed it is a tolerably safe inference that he and be alone baa inspired the affair.