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 plete their work before any one was stirring; and occasionally they had to remove corpses out of the thoroughfares, as Sepopo regarded all dead bodies, except those of his own people at the court, merely as offal, and gave orders that they should be treated as other rubbish.

It is only giving the Marutse people fair credit for their medical knowledge to say that it is certainly in advance of that of other South African tribes; on this superior knowledge the physicians in the secret council have devised their sorceries in such a way as to gain for themselves a kind of awe from the common people; their acquaintance with the medicinal or poisonous properties of many plants is such as might enable them to be of universal service, were they not actuated by the desire to maintain their hold upon the ignorant by the old routine of magic. Apart, however, from this, I found that they quite understood the treatment of dysentery, fever, coughs, colds, wounds, and snake-bites, although their remedies were always accompanied by mysterious ceremonies to inspire the faith which, perhaps, after all, contributed very largely to the cure. As with the Bechuanas, bleeding was quite a common operation; it was performed with metal, horn, or bone lancets upon the temples, cheeks, arms, breast, and shoulders, the blood being drawn out by bone suckers; it was adopted in cases of neuralgia to relieve any local pain, and was supposed to reduce inflammation in any of the neighbouring organs. Plants of which the medicinal qualities had been ascertained were dried and used in powder and decoctions, or sometimes they were burnt and reduced to charcoal. The animal sub-