Religion & morality > David Livingstone

144 Dr. Livingstone.
black lark, with yellow shoulders and a long tail, whose
featheis are eagerly sought by the natives as plumes,
floats over the grasses, with its tail in a perpendicular
position; while the lehututu, a large bird resembling
a turkey, utters the curious cry from which its name
is derived, and goes on with its work of insect¬
killing.
At Cassange, which is next reached, they find the
people a prey to the most degrading superstitions, not¬
withstanding their partial intercourse with white men;
to cure a sick child a diviner is called in, who throws
his dice, and works himself into a state of ecstasy, in
which he pretends to communicate with the Barimo,
or Great Spirit, a dim notion of a supreme being,
which all people, the most benighted, seem to have.
His fee for this divination is a slave, but he receives
instead, a brisk application of a couple of sticks to his
back by the father of the child, who has no faith in his
incantations; the mother rushes away, and commences
the doleful wail of one who sorrows without hope,
while as an accompaniment, her female companions
elicit screeching sounds from an instrument constructed
of caoutchouc. A woman is accused by her brother-
in-law of being the cause of his sickness, and to prove
her innocence offers to take the ordeal, that is, drink
the infusion of a poisonous tree; if the stomach rejects
it, she is considered innocent, if not, she dies, and that
is a proof of guilt. If an accusation of witchcraft is
made, this is the mode of trial; hundreds thus perish
yearly in this valley of Cassange. The same supersti¬
tious ideas prevail all through the tribes who live north