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This medicine enables the Pondoro to change himself back into a man, return to the village, and say, "Go and get the game that I have killed for you." Advantage is of course taken of what a lion has done, and they go and bring home the buffalo or antelope killed when he was a lion, or rather found when he was patiently pursuing his course of deception in the forest.
"Oh no," replied they; "if we tell him so, he may change himself and come when we are asleep and kill us." Having similar superstitions at home, they readily became as firm believers in the Pondoro as the natives of the village. We were told that he assumes the form of a lion and remains in the woods for days, and is sometimes absent for a whole month.
We saw the Pondoro of another village dressed in a fantastic style, with numerous charms hung round him, and followed by a troop of boys who were honouring him with rounds of shrill cheering. It is believed also that the souls of departed chiefs enter into lions, and render them sacred.
At times the Pondoro employs his acquired powers in hunting for the benefit of the village; and after an absence of a day or two, his wife smells the lion, takes a certain medicine, places it in the forest, and there quickly leaves it, lest the lion should kill even her.
The Makololo explained to us that he was a Pondoro, or a man who can change his form at will, and added that he trembles when he smells gunpowder. "Do you not see how he is trembling now?" We told them to ask him to change himself at once into a lion, and we would give him a cloth for the performance.
She then announces what game has been killed, and the villagers go into the forest to bring it home. The people believe also that the souls of the departed chiefs enter into lions. One night, a buffalo having been killed, a lion came close to the camp, when the Makololo declared that he was a pondoro, and told him that he ought to be ashamed of himself for trying to steal the meat of strangers.
No one ever enters this hut except the Pondoro and his wife, and no stranger is allowed even to rest his gun against the baobab-tree beside it: the Mfumo, or petty chief, of another small village wished to fine our men for placing their muskets against an old tumble-down hut, it being that of the Pondoro.
Dr Livingstone was stopping near the Kebrabasa village, when a man appeared, who pretended that he was a pondoro; that is, that he could change himself into a lion whenever he chose a statement his countrymen fully believed. Sometimes the pondoro hunts for the benefit of the villagers, when his wife takes him some medicine which enables him to change himself back into a man.
The Pondoro, being deaf to reason, and only roaring the louder, the men became angry, and threatened to send a ball through him if he did not go away. They snatched up their guns to shoot him, but he prudently kept in the dark, outside the luminous circle made by our camp fires, and there they did not like to venture.
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