"Before starting on a journey a man will spend perhaps a fortnight in preparing charms to overcome evils by the way and to enable him to destroy his enemies. If he is a trader, he desires to find favor in the eyes of chiefs and a liberal price for his goods."
[Illustration: WAR CANOE.--CALABAR, WEST AFRICA.]
_For Warring._ So implicit is African faith in signs, charms, and auspices, that when the sign before going into war is inauspicious, the natives' hopelessness of success sometimes makes them seem almost cowardly. Among the people of Garenganze in Southeast Africa, "when the chiefs meet in war, victory does not depend on merely strength and courage, as we should suppose, but on fetich 'medicines.' If some men on the side of the more powerful chief fall, they at once retire and acknowledge that their medicines have failed, and they cannot be induced to renew the conflict on any consideration."[65]
Among the Matabele, "before a war the doctors concoct a special medicine, and taking some of the froth from it, mark with it the forehead of those who have already killed a man."
A native of Batanga recently described to me the war-fetich as formerly prepared by his people. The medicine for it is arranged for thus. A house is built at least several hundred yards from the village. There will be present no one but the doctor, who eats and sleeps there while he is arranging with the spirits and deciding on the medicine. After two days he tells the people that he has finished it, that his preparations are ready, and that they must assemble at his house. He tells them to bring with them a certain shaped spear with prongs. Men have already gathered in the village, to the number of several hundred, waiting for the war. The doctor chooses from among them some man whom he sends to the forest to get a certain ingredient, a red amomum pod. (It contains the "Guinea grains," or Malaguetta pepper, which taste like cardamom seeds, which a century ago were so highly valued in Europe that only the rich could buy them.) Then the doctor and the man, leaving the crowd, go together to the forest with knife and machete and basket. They may have to go several miles in order to find a tree called "unyongo-muaele." The doctor holds the chewed amomum seeds in his mouth, and blows them out against the tree, saying, "Pha-a-a! The gun shots! Let them not touch me!" The assistant holds the basket while the doctor climbs the tree and rubs off pieces of loose bark which are caught in the basket as they fall. They then go on into the forest to find another tree named "kota." There he blows the chewed seeds in the same way saying the same,--"Pha-a-a! Thou tree! Let not the bullets hit me!" And the assistant, with basket standing below, catches the bark scraped down as the doctor climbs this tree.