CRUELTY OF THE ZULUS. 
807 
The Mambowo hunters were much alarmed until my name 
Was mentioned. They then joined our party, and on tha 
following day discovered a hippopotamus dead, which they 
tad previously wounded. This was the first feast of flesh 
m y men had enjoyed, for, though the gatuo was wonder- 
fully abundant, I had quite got out of tho way of shooting, 
and missed perpetually. Onco 1 wont with the determina- 
tion of getting so closo that I should not miss a zobra. 
W o went along ono of the branches that stretch out from the 
river in a small canoe, and two men, c ooping down as low 
as they could, paddled it slowly along to an open spaco near 
to a herd of zebras and pokus. Peering over tho edgo of 
tho canoe, tho open spaco seemed like a patch of wot ground, 
such as is often seen on tho banks of a river, made smooth 
as tho rcsting-placo of alligators. When wo camo within 
a few yards of it, we found by tho preeipitato plunging of 
the reptilo that this was a largo alligator itself. Although 
I had boon most careful to approach near enough, I unfov 
tunatoly only broko tho hind-leg of a zobra. My two men 
pursued it, but tho loss of a hind-log docs not prevent this 
animal from a gallop. As I walked slowly after tho mon 
on an extensive plain covered with a great crop of grass, 
blished custom, to the king's residence, there to mourn for the illustrious 
deceased. Umnante had been repudiated by Esaenzinconysrna, 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, 
°c from some other circumstance, the usual etiquette was somewhat laxly 
observed, and there ensued an appalling tragedy, which had never been 
exceeded, either in brutality or foulness, by any of the black and inhu- 
m »n exploits detailed in the long and bloody catalogue of Chaka's crimes. 
If pan tho grounds that ‘some of the subjects must have been accessary 
by witchcraft to tho death of tho queen-mother, and did not therefore 
attend to mourn,’ several kraals and villages were fired: men, women, 
*t>d children, having first been cruelly tortured, were roasted alivo in th» 
dames by tho ferocious agents of a still moro fiendish master; this act 
°f unprecedented barbarity being followed up by a general massacre 
throughout tho realm, — the tide of blood flowing for a whole fortnight 
ai ‘d reeking of cruelties too revolting to narrate.” — Ed. 
