’The doctor then made eight little fires—­that being the number of my hunters; on each he cast some roots,[9] which emitted a curious sickly odour and thick smoke; into each he cast a small stone, shouting, as he did so, the name to which the stone was dedicated; then he ate some “medicine,” and fell over in what appeared to be a trance for about ten minutes, during all which time his limbs kept moving.  Then he seemed to wake, went to one of the fires, raked the ashes about, looked at the stone attentively, described the man faithfully, and said:  “This man has died of the fever, and your gun is lost.”

’To the next fire as before:  “This man” (correctly described) “has killed four elephants,” and then he described the tusks.  The next:  “This man” (again describing him) “has been killed by an elephant, but your gun is coming home,” and so on through the whole, the men being minutely and correctly described; their success or non-success being equally so.  I was told where the survivors were, and what they were doing, and that in three months they would come out, but as they would not expect to find me waiting on them there so long after the time appointed, they would not pass that way.

’I took a particular note of all this information at the time, and to my utter amazement it turned out correct in every particular.

’It was scarcely within the bounds of possibility that this man could have had ordinary intelligence of the hunters; they were scattered about in a country two hundred miles away.’

Mr. Leslie could discover no explanation, nor was any suggested by friends familiar with the country and the natives whom he consulted.  He gives another example, which may be explained by ‘suggestion.’  A parallel case from Central Africa will be found in the ’Journal of the Anthropological Institute,’ November 1897, p. 320, where ‘private information,’ as usual, would explain the singular facts.

The Zulus themselves lay claim to a kind of clairvoyance which looks like the result of intense visualising power, combined with the awakening of the subconscious memory.[10]

’There is among black men a something which is divination within them.  When anything valuable is lost, they look for it at once; when they cannot find it, each one begins to practise this inner divination, trying to feel where the thing is; for, not being able to see it, he feels internally a pointing, which tells him if he will go down to such a place it is there, and he will find it.  At length it says he will find it; at length he sees it, and himself approaching it; before he begins to move from where he is, he sees it very clearly indeed, and there is an end of doubt.  That sight is so clear that it is as though it was not an inner sight, but as if he saw the very thing itself, and the place where it is; so he quickly arises and goes to the place.  If it is a hidden place he throws himself into it, as though there was something that impelled him to go as swiftly as the wind; and, in fact, he finds the thing, if he has not acted by mere head-guessing.  If it has been done by real inner divination, he really sees it.  But if it is done by mere head-guessing and knowledge that he has not gone to such a place and such a place, and that therefore it must be in such another place, he generally misses the mark.’