THE RIVER THAT FLOWED NORTH, NORTH, NORTH. 405 
towards us from all the other villages. It’s a war, 
prepare yourselves ! ’ 
“We were not a bit too soon : we had scarcely put on 
our belts and seized our omns before the vicious wretches- 
were upon us, and shooting their reed arrows in clouds. 
They screamed and yelled just like monkeys. Many of 
our people fell dead instantly from the poison before we 
could o'et together and fire on 
O 
them. Mtagamoyo ! he was 
everywhere brandishing his 
two-handed sword, and cleav- 
ing them as you would cleave 
a banana. The arrows passed 
through his shirt in many 
places. There were many good 
fellows like Mtagamoyo there, 
and they fought well ; but it 
was of no use. The dwarfs 
were firing from the top of the 
trees ; they crept through the 
tall grass close up to us, and 
shot their arrows in our faces. 
Then Mtagamoyo, seeing it was 
getting hot work, shouted 
‘ Boma ! Boma ! Boma ! ’ (pali- 
sade), and some hundreds of us 
cut down banana-trees, tore 
doors out, and houses down, 
and formed a boma at each 
end of the street, and then we 
were a little better off, for it 
was not such rapid, random 
shooting ; we fired more deliberately, and after several 
hours drove them off. 
“Do you think they gave us peace? Not a bit; a 
fresh party came up and continued the fight. They 
were such small things, we could not see them very 
well ; had they been tall men like us, we might have 
picked off’ hundreds of them. We could not fight all 
the time, for some of us had to sleep, so Mtagamoyo 
MFENGU CHIEF. 
