A MAGICIAN. 437 except to resign herself as best she could to the loss of her unfortunate relation ; there was a tinge of bitterness in her anxiety, for she could not help being irritated at the recklessness with which he had withdrawn himself from the reach of her protection. Meanwhile the weather for the time of year underwent a very unusual change. Although the rainy season is ordinarily reckoned to terminate about the end of April, the sky had suddenly become overcast in the middle of June, rain had recommenced falling, and the downpourhad bcen so heavy and continuous that all the ground was thoroughly sodden. To Mrs. Weldon personally this in- cessant rainfall brought no other inconvenience beyond depriving her of her daily exercise, but to the natives in gênerai it was a very serious calamity. The ripening crops in the low-lying districts were com- pletely flooded, and the inhabitants feared that they would be reduced to the greatest extremities ; all agricultural pursuits had corne to a standstill, and neither the queen nor her ministers could devise any expédient to avert or mitigate the misfortune. They resolved at last to hâve recourse to the magicians, not those who are called in request to heal diseases or to procure good luck, but to the mganga, sorcerers of a superior order, who are credited with the faculty of invoking or dispclling rain. But it was all to no purpose. It was in vain that the mganga monotoned their incantations, flourished their rattles, jingled their bells, and exhibited their amulets ; it was equally without avail that they rolled up their balls of dirt and spat in the faces of all the courtiers : the pitiless rain continued to descend, and the malign influences that were ruiing the clouds refused to be propitiated. The prospect seemed to become more and more hopeless, when the report was brought to Moena that there was a most wonderful mganga résident in the north of Angola. He had never been seen in this part of the country, but famé declared him to be a magician of the very highest order. Application, without delay, should be made to him ; he surely would be able to stay the rain.
