Note 190 — 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.

Illness and death are frequently ascribed to witchcraft. If a disease does not yield to medical treatment by a Nganga a moko, the nganga a ngombo, or witch-doctor, is called in with his fetish. He may ascribe the death to natural causes, or to a charm worked by a person recently deceased and beyond his reach; or he may denounce one or more persons as witches. The persons thus denounced are compelled to submit to the poison ordeal (see, among others, Dennett’s Seven Years among the Fjort, and his Folk-Lore).