But the people of Mofarigosat were licentious by nature and did not practice such damage upon their women. For which I was grateful on those nights when I consoled myself for my fear and loneliness by taking those women to my couch. Their lovemaking was done in the style I was already familiar with, entailing much tickling and no kissing on the mouth or private parts, and in positions other than the familiar one of England. They greased their bodies with a grease not much to my joy, but it was not intolerable, and I took my will of them often enough, thinking a time might be drawing near when the vengeance of Mofarigosat might send me from this world, and wanting such comfort as I might have before then.
I learned some of the strange ways these women have of keeping from being taken with child. They believe that if they open three cuts in their thighs, and rub into them some of the blood of their monthly bleeding, they will be rendered sterile; but all they need do, to have their fertility again, is reopen the cuts and wash them in running water. Some also think that if semen be used in the place of the monthly blood, that will have the same effect. Others tie knots in a piece of string to guard against pregnancy, or put hen’s eggs in their cunts after coupling, or catch a certain type of large white ant and insinuate it into the same place. As for arousing male desire, should that be necessary, they have a witchcraft of which I was told, that uses a he-goat’s yard, the ballocks of a cock, and a root called ngname, that has the shape of the male member. Also do they make potions of salamanders and roaches, the hair of the genital zone, leaves dipped in semen, and the like things.
Another way I occupied myself during my captivity in the city of Mofarigosat was to observe their system of justice, which makes use of the trial by poison. Indeed this dreadful and deadly kind of trial is general throughout the region, but never had I seen or heard of it before, though in faith I was due for some heavy encounters with it afterward.
The way this is done is that when any man is suspected of any offense he is carried before Mofarigosat, or one of his ministers, who questions him on his guilt. And if it be upon matters that he denies, and cannot be proved but by oath, then the suspected person is given over to the nganga-priest whose special skill it is to administer the ordeal by poison. One of the ways this is carried out is with a root which they call imbunda, about the bigness of one’s thumb, half a foot long, like a white carrot. This root is very strong and as bitter as gall, by my own knowledge from tasting it, and one root will serve to try one hundred.
The virtue of this root is, that if they put too much of it into water, the person that drinks it cannot void urine, and so it strikes up into the brain as though he were drunk, and he falls down, as though he were dead. Whereupon the people all cry out, “Ndoki, ndoki” that is, “Sorcerer, sorcerer,” and they knock him on the head and drag him away to hurl him over a cliff. But those who can make urine are found not guilty and set free.
In the like way they have another drug, nkasa, which comes from a certain red tree that is so noxious that the birds cannot endure even its shadow. When it is given to those who must take it, the nganga says, “If you are guilty of disturbing the peace or are a traitor, if you have committed such and such a crime, if you have stolen such and such a thing, if you have robbed and killed such and such a man, or if you have cast some spell or other, die from this nkasa. If you are innocent, vomit it forth and be free of all evil.” The guilty man will discharge red urine profusely and run a few paces and fall down and die, and his body is denied holy burial. But those who are innocent puke up the drug, and their urine is unaffected, and they live.
I learned in my later life in Africa many other forms of trial by ordeal, such as the trial by hot iron and the trial by boiling water and the trial by snail-shells, or sea-shells. But I will tell of all these in their proper place.
I observed much else in my weeks in the city of Mofarigosat. One thing I witnessed was the making of the raised scars that are thought to be such a thing of beauty, by cutting the skin and inserting cinders underneath to inflame it, or by pressing certain plants into the incisions. They told me that certain scars had special meaning upon women, such as those along the thighs that are taken to say, “Squeeze me,” and a circular scar on the buttock that has the meaning, “This is where a man holds me.” But I learned only a little of these mysteries.
And also I saw the shame that comes upon the women when it is their bleeding time of the month, for they are thought unholy and dangerous then. Men have a deep fear of that blood and will on no account go anywhere near it, nor are the cattle of the tribe permitted to approach a woman who is in her menstruous time. They have a special house where those women go on the first two days, and there are no wells near it, nor plantations, nor pastures. Yet the blood of them is a powerful magic that they use in various rites, of which I know nothing.
Since I had naught to do but watch these things, I watched and absorbed a great deal. And I marveled much that each nation of Africa has its whole host of special customs, its myriad of tribal witchcrafts and spells and mokissos and philosophies, so many that it would take a thousand chroniclers a thousand lifetimes to record it all, and I think it be of high interest. Yet what will happen, if the Portugals have their way and turn all this land into Christian territory? And make everyone here wear Portugal clothes and talk the Portugal tongue and go to the Mass and forswear all their native habit? You might reply that this would be only for the good, to abolish the foul pagan way, and to some degree I would agree with that, since I see no merit in the trial by poison or the cutting of women’s parts or the like. Yet when such things have disappeared wholly from the face of the earth, and everything is but the same everywhere, whether we be in London or Muscovy or Turkey or Angola, have we not lost a great deal of richness out of the world?
On all this did I ponder, while I waited for Diogo Pinto Dourado and his men to return and redeem me from my being pawned to Mofarigosat. And the days went by, which I counted by making little marks on the wood of a soft tree outside my cottage, and the tally mounted to twenty and forty and fifty and then to sixty, which was the expiration of the agreed-upon period. I was not so innocent that I expected the Portugals to return to me, but yet I was not so soured upon mankind that I would deny out of hand the possibility that they would.
And so I went on hoping and tallying and hoping and tallying. Mofarigosat, too, was keeping a tally; and as we came to the end of the second month there was a discernible change in their treatment of me, for I had no more women and no more wine and far more humble food. And the time ran out.
I will give Mofarigosat credit for this much, that he did allow four additional days of grace. But at the sixty-fourth day that was all the grace I could have, and some of the chief men of his court came to me at my cottage, and one said, “Your people have not kept their promise, and now will we cut off your head.”
It seemed to me sure that I had misheard him. But I had not, for they took me straightaway to a place in the great plaza of the town where they punished their thieves and adulterers. Here there was a chopping-block, and to one side they did have the most grisly place that could be imagined, where many chopped-off hands and arms and legs were piled, and a goodly number of chopped-off heads, and old bones to be seen beneath this, and flies of a large size with gleaming green bodies buzzing around over everything. This charnel mound did speak to me of frequent and terrible punishments administered by the officers of Mofarigosat upon his people, and I understood the obedience of the citizens to him.