with me, and still more volubly with each other, the principal topic of
interest, I soon discovered, being the festival which was to commence
one hour after daybreak on the morrow, and to last all through the day
and well on into the hours of the succeeding night. The chiefs
conversed with the utmost freedom in my presence and hearing, but at the
outset I was too much engrossed in the business of distributing gifts to
pay very much attention to what was said, a stray word or two here and
there being all that I caught at first. At length, however, it began to
dawn upon me that the so-called "festival" promised to be anything
rather than festive, if I had not completely misunderstood the trend of
certain of the remarks which had attracted my attention, and accordingly
I pricked up my ears, and began to ask a few questions. And then I
learned, to my horror, that the first feature of the festival, namely,
the "smelling out" of the king's secret enemies by the witch doctors,
was more likely to resemble closely an orgy of wholesale murder than
anything else that I could imagine.

The ceremony, I gathered, was somewhat as follows. The "witch doctors"
or magicians of the nation--numbering in all something over a hundred--
all of whom were then in Gwanda for the purposes of the ceremony, would
assemble at sunset that same evening in a sort of fetish house; and
there, under the leadership and direction of one Machenga, the head or
chief witch doctor, would perform certain mysterious rites, and submit
themselves to a certain mysterious form of treatment, lasting the entire
night, which, it was generally understood, would enable them infallibly
to "smell out" or detect every individual who might harbour evil
thoughts or designs against the king. And these unfortunates, it
appeared, would, upon detection, be haled forth and summarily executed
there and then! I learned, further, that while the king put the most
implicit faith in the infallibility of the witch doctors, and especially
in that of Machenga, the head or chief of them, a few of the indunas who
were then talking to me held rather strongly to the opinion that the
selection of victims was not so much the result of supernatural guidance
and wisdom vouchsafed to the witch doctors, as it was--at least in the
case of the more important and distinguished victims--governed rather by
Machenga's personal hatred, or his cupidity; a few of the shrewder
observers having noticed, e