In common with other backward races the Zulus have faith in the power of the rain doctors to make, or to draw, rain, and also to prevent it from falling. The Zulu kings generally kept rain doctors; but as these men, when they did not make enough rain to please their royal masters, were in danger of being fined or even put to death, they were obliged to invent a good many excuses for their failures. The most common was that they felt sure somebody was practising witchcraft, that is to say, putting pegs dipped in medicine into the ground, or tying knots in the grass on the mountain-tops and sprinkling them with medicines, either of which proceedings would stop the rain. Then the king would send messengers round the country commanding his subjects to find out where pegs had been driven in, or knots tied in the grass, and the owner of the kraal in whose neighbourhood this was found to have been done was liable to be killed or fined, at the king’s discretion. In a dry season people were constantly in fear of this happening, for they knew that any who wished to injure them would drive in pegs near their kraals and then report them to the king for having done it.

Cetshwayo once had a rain doctor of whom he thought a great deal; but one year when there was a terrible drought he lost faith in him, and then someone accused him to the king of having wilfully prevented the rain from falling. Of course this made his majesty furiously angry, and he ordered the unfortunate man to be killed and thrown into the river, together with his hut and everything he possessed. No sooner was this order carried out than the rain fell in torrents. Such is the story told by the natives, but I cannot vouch for the truth of it.^[6]

The Zulus used to consider the Basuto rain doctors the best of any, and the king sometimes engaged some of them to come to Zululand when rain was wanted. One year a large number of them arrived, laden with roots and other medicines, from Basutoland. Some carried calabashes filled with liquids, which were rolled about on the ground at the cattle-kraal to bring thunder, and bundles containing charms to bring lightning and rain were stuck upright in the ground. These performances went on for some weeks, until at last the rain came, and the Zulus were satisfied that it was caused by the hard work of the Basuto doctors. These men were kept well supplied with beef and beer all the time they were in the country, and handsome presents were given them when they left it to return to their own land.