throughout Southern Europe as strong as it was in the days of
Pliny. As amongst barbarians generally, no misfortune happens, no
accident occurs, no illness nor death can take place without the
agency of wizard or witch. There is nothing more odious than this
crime; it is hostile to God and man, and it must be expiated by
death in the most terrible tortures. Metamorphosis is a common
art amongst Mpongwe magicians: this vulgar materialism, of which
Ovid sang, must not be confounded with the poetical Hindu
metempsychosis or transmigration of souls which explains
empirically certain physiological mysteries. Here the adept
naturally becomes a gorilla or a leopard, as he would be a lion
in South Africa, a hyena in Abyssinia and the Somali country, and
a loup-garou in Brittany.[FN#15]

The poison ordeal is a necessary corollary to witchcraft. The
plant most used by the Oganga (medicine man) is a small red
rooted shrub, not unlike a hazel bush, and called Ikazya or
Ikaja. Mr. Wilson (p. 225) writes "Nkazya:" Battel (loc. cit.
334) terms the root "Imbando," a corruption of Mbundu. M. du
Chaillu (chap. xv.) gives an illustration of the "Mboundou leaf"
(half size): Professor John Torrey believes the active principle
to be a vegeto-alkali of the Strychnos group, but the symptoms do
not seem to bear out the conjecture. The Mpongwe told me that the
poison was named either Mbundu or Olonda (nut) werere--perhaps
this was what is popularly called "a sell." Mbundu is the
decoction of the scraped bark which corresponds with the "Sassy-
water" of the northern maritime tribes. The accused, after
drinking the potion, is ordered to step over sticks of the same
plant, which are placed a pace apart. If the man be affected, he
raises his foot like a horse with string-halt, and this convicts