Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/251

Rh disappointed in him, they still have a superstitious belief in his power. I have frequently been told that "The Mirdites cannot do [so and so], because Prenk will not allow them. They would like to, of course. But what can they do?" When I have pointed out that one man cannot possibly prevent thirty thousand people taking separate action if they wish, I am always told,—"But he was born chief. He is sent by God. They have to do what he says."

Scutari.

I was, many years ago, at Panda-ma-tenka,—then the terminus of the wagon-road towards the Zambesi,—in company with the late George Westbeach, one of the last of the old-time far-interior traders, and a man so intimately conversant with native life and customs that he was usually described as a "white induna." Westbeach had a dog named Tau (Lion), almost as well known as himself, and a powerful mongrel animal famous for having three distinct types of deportment for as many classes of humanity,—one of cordiality and submission for his master and, in a lesser degree, his master's most special intimates, another of a sort of indifferent friendliness (not amounting to bonhomie) for white men generally, and a third of uncompromising hostility towards all natives not included in the first category.

Whilst I was at the place mentioned, a party of Bushmen (not Kaffirs, if I remember rightly) came in, with some honeycomb for barter. They found it difficult to approach on account of the dog, and at last one man was bitten. The bite was a bad one, and the sufferer was not satisfied until he had obtained, through Westbeach, some of the dog's hairs, which he placed upon the wound.

This incident was brought back to my mind by reading, some years afterwards, in Cervantes' La Gitanilla, how a stranger, bitten in approaching an encampment of gipsies, is treated by