A Breath from the Veldt 259 



close to an immense mealie patch full of guinea-fowls. These guinea-fowls are 

 a constant source of food supply to the natives ; each man has a portion of the 

 field to himself, and there he sets snares and catches two or three of the birds 

 every morning. 



About sundown N'Dale turned up with all his warriors, to the number 

 of forty — in readiness, he said, for a Matabele attack which might happen 

 any day. Now N'Dale at the pan where I had first met him, clothed in a 

 billy-cock hat and an old greatcoat, and humbly asking for a small present, was 

 a very different creature from N'Dale in his own village, clad in all his savage 

 finery, and surrounded by his warriors. His manner and that of his men was, 

 to say the least of it, insolent and disagreeable, and I soon saw that, thinking he 

 had fairly got us on toast, he meant to blackmail us pretty freely before we got 

 out of his clutches. He wanted a new Martini rifle and fifty cartridges as pay- 

 ment for guides over to the Lundi Mountain, to which I replied I would pay 

 for guides and carriers, and- would give him the rifle on my return, if I found 

 game ; but though we got on pretty well for a time, no conclusion was come 

 to. The natives meanwhile began pressing round the waggon, and it was no 

 easy matter to prevent them from pilfering things from it. 



As nothing could be settled that night, I was relieved when the chief 

 departed and took most of his followers with him, for I foresaw there might be 

 trouble. There had not been a white man here for thirteen years, the last 

 visitor being an unfortunate Dutch hunter who had been taken over to the 

 Lundi by some of N'Dale's men, to hunt hippo, and who had died of fever on 

 his return. Most of the people had therefore never seen a white man, and the 

 tricks they played to find out what manner of men we were, were at times 

 more than we could stand. 



Close by the pool where we were encamped was another smaller one, and 

 at the side of this was the fresh spoor of a lion. Thinking it somewhat odd 

 for a lion to be hanging round almost within the village, we made inquiries, 

 and to our surprise Ofiice reported that, though the natives solemnly denied it, 

 a lion had been there quite recently. With this lion about, we ought of course 

 to have made a thorn " scherm " for protection during the night ; but we were 

 all very tired with our long trek and Van Staden very seriously ill. N'Dale, 

 too, did not leave till it was nearly dark, so we had little time for such pre- 

 parations. Had we known what was to follow we should have been more 

 careful ; however, most of us have to learn wisdom by hard experience. 



Van Staden went to sleep early that night, to my great relief, as he had had 



