nies are kept also with inviolable secrecy, and they are bound by
horrid oaths and incantations. These people seem to delight in
disseminating improbable tales of their institution, and their invention
appears to be exhausted in superstitious legends of its mysteries.

The Timmanees have an inquisitorial institution called _bunda_, noticed in
page 72, to which women only are subjected. The season of penitence is
superintended by an elderly woman, called _bunda_ woman; and fathers even
consign their wives and daughters to her investigation when they become
objects of suspicion. Here is extracted from them an unreserved confession
of every crime committed by themselves, or to which they are privy in
others. Upon their admission they are besmeared with white clay, which
obliterates every trace of human appearance, and they are solemnly abjured
to make an unequivocal confession; which if not complied with, they are
threatened with death as the inevitable consequence. The general result is
a discovery of fact and falsehood, in proportion as their fears of
punishment are aroused, which the _bunda_ woman makes known to the people
who assemble in the village or town where the _bunda_ is instituted. If she
is satisfied with the confession, the individual is dismissed from the
_bunda_, and, as is noticed in Chapter VII. an act of oblivion is passed
relative to her former conduct; but where the crime of witchcraft is
included, slavery is uniformly the consequence: those accused as partners
of her guilt are obliged to undergo the ordeal by _red water_, redeem
themselves by slaves, or go into slavery themselves.

When the _bunda_ woman is dissatisfied with the confessions, she makes the
object sit down, and after rubbing poisonous leaves, procured for the
purpose, between her hands, and infusing them in water, she makes her drink
in proportion to its strength. It naturally occasions pain in the bowels,
which is considered as an infallible evidence of guilt. Incantations and
charms are then resorted to by the _bunda_ woman, to ascertain what the
concealed crime is, and after a _decent_ period employed in this
buffoonery, the charges are brought in conformity with the imagination or
malignity of this priestess of mystery and iniquity.

During the continuance of this engine of avarice, oppression, and fraud in
any town, the chiefs cause their great drum and other instruments of music
to be continually in action, and every appearance of