understand the African races without knowing
something of the terror of witchcraft, magic, and ill-luck which hangs
like a cloud over their lives. Differing from each other in many ways,
the African tribes are alike in this, that their religion is one of
fear, dread of unseen powers that work against man's peace and
well-being unless propitiated by gifts, or defied by charms; and the
result of this belief is to put unlimited power into the hands of those
who profess to have intercourse with the spirit-world, and to foresee,
or even to influence, the future of their neighbours. Therefore the
European who comes to teach, to civilise, or to govern, finds his
mightiest opponent in the witch-doctor, or medicine-man, who knows a
little more than his neighbours, and makes capital out of their
ignorance.

Some seventy years ago a party of these witch-doctors, who were making
an excellent living among the Kaffirs by professing to make rain and
find witches to order, met their match for once in the English Governor
of the newly annexed province known as 'Queen Adelaide,' the genial and
energetic officer of Peninsular fame, Colonel--afterwards Sir
Harry--Smith.[5] The English 'father,' as he was styled by the Kaffirs,
had acquired an extraordinary influence, by dint of much practical
common sense and knowledge of humanity, a rigid military discipline, and
last, not least, a stick with a very large knob at the end. Not that he
ever used this stick to correct offenders, but it was always present on
state occasions, and was reverenced as a sort of magic wand by the
natives, for the words spoken by the 'father,' when he took that stick
in his hand, were as the laws of the Medes and Persians. 'I shall wait
for two hours before I touch my stick,' he said to a trembling, cringing
chief, who had tried to stir up rebellion against the English rule. 'I
must be quite cool; Englishmen are generous, but they must be just.'

[Footnote 5: Harrismith and Ladysmith, in Natal and the Orange River
Colony, are named after Sir Harry and his wife.]

It was a very anxious two hours that the chief spent, waiting for the
touch upon the magic wand, and when he was summoned to the presence of
the 'father,' and solemnly forgiven, he was cured of treasonable
practices once and for all.

Colonel Smith started a vigorous campaign against rain-making and
witch-finding, the latter being a practice not altogether unknown in
England, where, three hundred years