Note 183 — THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF ANDREW BATTELL OF LEIGH IN ESSEX, SENT BY THE PORTUGALS PRISONER TO ANGOLA, WHO LIVED THERE, AND IN THE ADJOINING REGIONS, NEAR EIGHTEEN YEARS.

Mbundu, the powdered root of a species of strychnos, is administered to confessed witches accused of having caused the death of a person. If the accused be guilty, this poison causes him to lose all control over the sphincter urethræ; he discharges red urine profusely, runs a few paces, falls down and dies. An innocent person only discharges a few drops on a banana leaf (Pechuel-Loesche, Loango Exp., vol. iii, p. 188). Nkasa, prepared from the bark of Erythrophlaeum guineense, paralyses the action of the heart, but if thrown up at once, it will not kill (Dr. M. Boehr, Correspon. der Deutschen Afrik. Ges., vol. i, p. 332). It is administered to persons who deny being witches. (For a full account of such a trial, see Dennett, Seven Years Among the Fjort, p. 165.) In the case of minor offences, the ordeal of the hot matchet—bikalo, bisengo, or bau—is resorted to. The knife is passed thrice over the skin of the leg, and if it burns the accused is declared guilty (see also Dennett, Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Fjort, p. 162). The Nganga is, of course, open to a bribe, and in the case of a chief the poison may be administered to a substitute—a dog or a slave—and the penalty commuted to a fine. See also Bentley’s Pioneering on the Congo, London, 1900.