CRUELTY OF THE ZULUS. 307 



The Mambowe hunters were much alarmed until my name 

 was mentioned. They then joined our party, and on the 

 following day discovered a hippopotamus dead, which they 

 had previously wounded. This was the first feast of flesh 

 my men had enjoyed, for, though the game was wonder- 

 fully abundant, I had quite got out of the way of shooting, 

 and missed perpetually. Once 1 went with the determina- 

 tion of getting so close that I should not miss a zebra. 

 "We went along one of the branches that stretch out from the 

 river in a small canoe, and two men, stooping down as low 

 as they could, paddled it slowly along to an open space near 

 to a herd of zebras and pokus. Peering over the edge of 

 the canoe, the open space seemed like a patch of wet ground, 

 such as is often seen on the banks of a river, made smooth 

 as the resting-place of alligators. When we came within 

 a few yards of it, we found by the precipitate plunging of 

 the reptile that this was a large alligator itself. Although 

 I had been most careful to approach near enough, I unfor- 

 tunately only broke the hind-leg of a zebra. My two men 

 pursued it, but the loss of a hind-leg does not prevent this 

 animal from a gallop. As I walked slowly after the men 

 on an extensive plain covered with a great crop of grass, 



Wished custom, to the king's residence, there to mourn for the illustrious 

 deceased. Umnante had been repudiated by Essenzinconyarna, and had 

 afterward been guilty of signal infidelity to the nation by cohabiting with 

 a commoner of her father's tribe. Whether in consequence of this lapse, 

 or from some other circumstance, the usual etiquette was somewhat laxlj 

 observed, and there ensued an appalling tragedy, which had never beer 

 exceeded, either in brutality or foulness, by any of the black and inhu- 

 man exploits detailed in the long and bloody catalogue of Chaka's crimes. 

 Upon the grounds that ' some of the subjects must have been accessary 

 by witchcraft to the death of the queen-mother, and did not therefore 

 attend to mourn,' several kraals and villages were fired ; men, women, 

 and children, having first been cruelly tortured, were roasted alive in tha 

 flames by the ferocious agents of a still more fiendish master ; this act 

 of unprecedented barbarity being followed up by a general massacre 

 throughout the realm, — the tide of blood flowing for a whole fortnight, 

 and reeking of cruelties too revolting to narrate." — Ed. 



