[ Poison Ordeal. ] 238
They have a dreadful and deadly kind of trial in controversies, after this manner: there is a little tree, or shrub, with a small root (it is called Imbunda) about the bigness of one’s thumb, half a foot long, like a white carrot. Now, when any listeth to accuse a man, or a family, or whole street, of the death of any of his friends, saying, that such a man bewitched him, the Ganga assembleth the accused parties, and scrapes that root, the scrapings whereof he mixeth with water, which makes it as bitter as gall (he tasted of it); one root will serve for the trial of a hundred men. The Ganga brews the same together in gourds, and with plantain stalks hitteth everyone, after they have drunk, with certain words. Those that have received the drink walk by, till they can make urine, and then they are thereby free’d. Others abide till either urine frees them, or dizziness takes them, which the people no sooner perceive but they cry, Undoke, Undoke,239 that is “naughty witch”; and he is no sooner fallen by his dizziness, but they knock him on the head, and dragging him away, hurl him over the cliff. In every Liberty240 they have such drinks, which they make in case of theft, and death of any person. Every week it falls out that some or other undergoes this trial, which consumeth multitudes of people.