[ Poison Ordeals. ]
When any man is suspected of any offence he is carried before the king, or before Mani Bomma [Mamboma],182 which is, as it were, a judge under the king. And if it be upon matter that he denieth, and cannot be proved but by their oath, then the suspected person is thus sworn: they have a kind of root which they call Imbondo [mbundu].183
This root is very strong, and is scraped into water. The virtue of this root is, that if they put too much of it into water, the person that drinketh it cannot void urine, and so it striketh up into the brain, as though he were drunk, and he falleth down, as though he were dead. And those that fall are counted as guilty, and are punished.184
[Purchas adds, in a marginal note:—
“He told me that this root makes the water as bitter as gall (he tasted it), and one root will serve to try one hundred. They which have drunk and made water are cleared, before which, if dizziness take them, they cry: Undoke, Undoke,185 and presently execute them. See my Relations, b. 7 c. 10, which I writ from his mouth.186 Neither may this be ascribed to the virtue of the herb, but to the vice of the Devil, a murderer and his instrument, the Ganga or priest.187 And therefore that conjecture seems unprobable. For how could an ordinary trial of life where are so many so perilous; and therefore curious (more than) spectators, nor perceive this in so long and frequent experience, which costs so many their dearest friends their dearest life? I think rather that this was the transcriber’s conjecture. I remember no such scruple in his narrations to me. Who knows not the Devil’s ambition of Deity, and cruel misanthropy or man-hating? This is his apish imitation of Divinity, and those rites prescribed for trial in the case of jealousy, Numbers, v.188 In Guinea like trial is made by salt, and also by the Fetisseroes pot. In Benomotapa by water also; in the Maramba trial before [mentioned (see p. 56)], and Motamba trial by hot iron in Angola;189 the ploughshares in olden times with us; and the trial of witches in the East parts by water, etc., were not unlike in deceivable superstition.”]