led. The Lama now mounted across the bench, and
soon carried it, or, as was commonly believed, it carried him, to the
very tent, where he ordered the damask to be produced. The demand was
directly complied with; for it is vain in such cases to offer any
excuse.' {184a} Here we have not a wand, indeed, but a wooden object
which turned in the direction, not of water or minerals, but of human
guilt. A better instance is given by the Rev. H. Rowley, in his account
of the Mauganja. {184b} A thief had stolen some corn. The medicine-man,
or sorcerer, produced two sticks, which he gave to four young men, two
holding each stick. The medicine-man danced and sang a magical
incantation, while a zebra-tail and a rattle were shaken over the holders
of the sticks. 'After a while, the men with the sticks had spasmodic
twitchings of the arms and legs; these increased nearly to convulsions. .
. . According to the native idea, _it was the sticks which were
possessed primarily_, and through them the men, _who could hardly hold
them_. The sticks whirled and dragged the men round and round like mad,
through bush and thorny shrub, and over every obstacle; nothing stopped
them; their bodies were torn and bleeding. At last they came back to the
assembly, whirled round again, and rushed down the path to fall panting
and exhausted in the hut of one of a chief's wives. The sticks, rolling
to her very feet, denounced her as a thief. She denied it; but the
medicine-man answered, "The spirit has declared her guilty; the spirit
never lies."' The woman, however, was acquitted, after a proxy trial by
ordeal: a cock, used as her proxy, threw up the muavi, or ordeal-poison.

Here the points to be noted are, first, the violent movement of the
sticks, which the men could hardly hold; next, the physical agitation of
the men. The former point is illustrated by the confession of a civil
engineer writing in the 'Times.' This gentleman had seen the rod
successfully used for water; he was asked to try it himself, and he
determined that it should not twist in his hands 'if an ocean rolled
under his feet.' Twist it did, however, in spite of all his efforts to
hold it, when he came above a concealed spring. Another example is
quoted in the 'Quarterly Review,' vol. xxii. p. 374. A narrator, in whom
the editor had 'implicit confidence,' mentions how, when a lady held the
twig just over a hidden well, 'the twig turned so quick as to snap,
breaking nea