HER MAJESTY'S MISSION TO MATABELELAND 149 



friendly. The queens coveted sweets and beads, the soldiers 

 knives, cloth, food, and tinder-boxes. In the morning the 

 regiments went through their drill, keeping up all the time a 

 monotonous song, with the following meaning probably " Give 

 us food, King, and beer, for our stomachs are empty." I had 

 better at once describe the Matabele war-dress, which is very 

 handsome and most picturesque ; it makes the men look very 

 broad and tall. A hood and cape of black ostrich feathers 

 covers head and shoulder ; on the former waves a long blue 

 crane feather, while from the point of the latter hangs a white 

 feather. A heavy kilt is worn in many folds, made sometimes of 

 blue monkey, sometimes of leopard-skin, the loins being adorned 

 with rolls of blue cotton cloth and coils of beads. A stiff white 

 frill made from the ends of oxen's tails is fastened above the 

 elbows and knees, while metal anklets encircle the legs and ring 

 when the wearers dance. In his left hand the soldier carries an 

 ox-hide shield, 5 to 6 feet in height, and two assegais, in his 

 right a heavy stick or the dreaded knobkerry. A Matabele 

 warrior is very striking in his savage picturesqueness ! The 

 shields vary in colour in the different divisions of the army, 

 some being black, others black and white, white, or brown and 

 white. The royal shield is black with a small spot of white. 

 At the King's invitation we witnessed one of his father's old 

 regiments dance before him, the Mahlahlenlele (Pioneers), and on 

 another occasion he called out his bodyguard, the dreaded Imbizu 

 regiment. This is the crack corps ; the men are all well-born 

 of the old Zulu stock. It has a very bad name for bloodthirsty 

 cruelty, and is always sent where dirty work is to be done. The 

 regiment takes the post of honour in the body of the army when 

 drawn up for battle in the Zulu half-moon formation. At these 

 entertainments the King sat in his perambulator in the primitive 

 costume already mentioned, his head being sheltered from the 

 sun by an umbrella gorgeous with every colour of the rainbow. 

 We in our thick uniforms had to roast in the sun, often a very 

 trying time. But now all the regiments had arrived, as also the 

 dance, witch and rain doctors, the most important people in the 

 kingdom during the week of the war-dance. The opening cere- 

 mony is the corn-dance, which took place during the afternoon. 

 Attached to every shield, and running through loops at the back 

 of it, is a stick carrying at its upper end a jackal's tail. These 



