A FINE RACE. 95 



forest appeared as still as death, if I except the 

 occasional shrill and discordant cry of the crowned 

 hornbill {JBuceros melanoleuctis) which every now 

 and then broke the silence. For some minutes 

 Dillon and self waited in the keenest state of 

 expectation, still there was no indication of the 

 approach of the quarry, and both would have 

 considered Umpiqua's warning a false alarm had 

 not our guide continued significantly to move 

 his hand, invoking both patience and silence. 

 The pantomimic actions of the Zulus are perfect, 

 even when they do not understand a word of our 

 language, for they convey by these means, even to 

 the most obtuse, what they otherwise could not 

 express. Umpiqua was a marvel, even among mighty 

 hunters, for age had given him extraordinary expe- 

 rience in an avocation he loved, still had not in the 

 slightest way impaired the acuteness of his senses or 

 his power of enduring the most exhausting fatigue. 

 Few Zulus of the middle or lower classes marry till 

 they are forty, unless they have performed some 

 wonderful act of prowess in battle or the hunting- 

 field — for all are soldiers — and as a reward for which 

 the king has presented them with a wife. To this 

 lengthened celibacy I attribute these people so long 

 retaining their activity, keenness of perception, and 

 stamina to endure fatigue up into and even far 

 beyond middle age. 



But truce to my moralising, a faint sound strikes my 



