196 MONAHENG MURDERED. Giiap. IX. 



command respect, and lead men to be reasonable who miglit 

 otherwise feel disposed to be troublesome. Nothing, however, 

 our fracas with Mpende excepted, could be more peaceful 

 than our j>assage through this tract of country in 1856. We 

 then had nothing to excite the cupidity of the people, and the 

 men maintained themselves, either by selling elephant's meat, 

 or by exhibiting feats of foreign dancing. Most of the people 

 were very generous and friendly ; but the Banyai, nearer to 

 Tette than this, stopped our march with a threatening war- 

 dance. One of our party, terrified at this, ran away, as 

 Ave thought, insane, and could not, after a painful search 

 of three days, be found. The Banyai, evidently touched 

 by our distress, allowed us to proceed. Through a man we 

 left on an island a little below Mpende's, we subsequently 

 learned that poor Monaheng had fled thither and had been 

 murdered by the headman for no reason except that he was 

 defenceless. This headman had since become odious to his 

 countrymen, and had been put to death by them. 



Our path leads frequently through vast expanses of 

 apparently solitary scenery ; a strange stillness pervades the 

 air ; no sound is heard from bird or beast or living thing ; no 

 village is near ; the air is still, and earth and sky have sunk 

 into a deep, sultry repose, and like a lonely ship on the de- 

 sert sea is the long winding line of weary travellers on the 

 hot, glaring plain. We discover that we are not alone in the 

 wilderness ; other living forms are round about us, with curious 

 eyes on all our movements. As we enter a piece of wood- 

 land, an unexpected herd of pallahs, or waterbucks, suddenly 

 appears, standing as quiet and still, as if constituting a part 

 of the landscape ; or, we pass a clump of thick thorns, and 

 see through the bushes the dim phantom-like forms of buffaloes, 

 their heads lowered, gazing at us with fierce untameable 



