South African Native Surely Exercised Some Kind of Influence Over Big Python.
    Many powers are said to be possessed by the African native which those of the Occident find hard to credit. Here is a story of “Muti,” or hypnosis, as performed, according to a reliable inforant, upon a hude python. The narrator says:
    “I was in the veld when the herd boy, very excited, came to me with the story of a big inyoko, ‘quite near.’ I saddled up, took the shotgun, and went with him. After covering some 200 yards, I asked where the snake was. ‘Quite near,baas.’ We covered a mile, which meant that the herd boy must have left the snake quite a time, possibly half an hour. I pulled up. ‘The snake won’t be where you saw it last, it’s no good my going farther.’ ‘Yes, baas, come, it is there.’ ‘How do you know? I made him stay fast, baas-I put muti on him.’ So we went on, and, quite two miles from where I had started, the boy pointed up a small valley. ‘He is there,’ baas,’ and sure enough there was a python lying straight out on the grass and quite still. I shot it, and then turned to the boy: ‘Now tell me why did the snake remain like this.’ The boy picked up a twig from a bush, ran it between his lips, and stuck it in the ground an inch from the snake’s nose. “I do so, baas, and the inyoko, he lay still. He no move.”
    The reptile remained with its eyes fixed cross-wise on the small twig before its nose. The distance from the stable was quite two miles, so that the python must have been staring at the twig for a full hour before the farmer reached it.
Post a Comment