32 THE FERNAND VAZ. Chap. U. 



pots, a quantity of brass buttons, the remains of a 

 coat, and an old umbrella-stick, which was all that 

 was left of this article, a present from me, and which 

 he always carried about with him. All around were 

 skeletons and bones crumbling to powder, the frag- 

 ments of mats and cloth which had served the 

 corpses as their winding-sheets, and broken relics 

 which had been reverently buried with the dead. 

 It was a place that one might moralise in — the 

 humble, fragile grave-yard of a tribe of poor negroes, 

 which represented in their eyes quite as much as our 

 proud monuments of stone that will also in their 

 turn disappear. 



Returning to the old settlement I saw the house 

 in which Rinkimongani died. It was still standing 

 close to my own place, which had been partly de- 

 stroyed by fire in the burning of the prairie. All 

 the out-buildings and huts of my men were com- 

 plete ruins, but the old man's house was in tolerable 

 preservation. The faith of Rinkimongani m my 

 return had overcome his superstitious scruples ; for 

 every negro believed the settlement had been be- 

 witched, and wondered at the old man's folly and 

 obstinacy in remaining there after so many had 

 died. It will be remembered that the place was once 

 abandoned on account of its evil reputation during 

 my former residence. As I wandered about the 

 ruins I thought of the many happy hours I had 

 spent here in the days of my Natural History en- 

 thusiasm, when I was amassing my collections, and 

 the addition of a new species was the coveted reward 

 of a long day's hunt. The birds which used to build 



