"Have you not heard before that that which is heard only cannot be heard
again in Court? You must bring witnesses who saw and heard themselves
what you say has happened. The words of the man who says he heard the
story from another is no testimony against a man when he is to be tried
for a crime or a debt."

After writing down this crisp and explicit statement from a Native whom
I knew to have had little or no intercourse with educated Europeans I
asked the old man if he had ever heard the matter discussed in a
European Court. He said he had not, and seemed surprised that I should
consider his words worth putting down in a note-book.

When it is realised how few laymen amongst ourselves are able to grasp
the distinction between admissible and inadmissible evidence in a Court
of Law, and how few would be able to express themselves as clearly as
did this old, so-called, heathen, then the instance is seen to be worth
citing.

I remember a Native witchdoctor who in defending himself against a
charge of alleged witchcraft practice spoke thus:

"The people you have heard to-day came to me and told me that they had
had sickness and death at their kraal. I knew these people and I knew
that there had been strife among them for a long time over the dividing
of an inheritance. I threw the bones[18]--it is our way--and I told
these people that the spirit of the old woman, who was the grand-mother
of most of them, was angry because of the quarrelling that did not
cease; I told them that the snakes, that is to say the ancestral spirits
of these people, were angry at the noise of the quarrelling, and I told
them to redeem their fault by killing a goat,--it is our way. And now it