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THE NEW AFRICA 
shorter range, while their guns would still be at the disadvantage 
of shooting at the ordinary distance. He was greatly disap¬ 
pointed when told this was impossible, for he fancied he had 
discovered a new method of making the Matabeles ‘ sit up ’ a 
bit. In such converse, almost daily, we passed many hours 
with the inquisitive king. 
The reader may be sure that I seized a favourable oppor¬ 
tunity of explaining to the king the fallacy of paying tribute to 
Indala for the privileges afforded by the river. He approached 
the subject with some alarm, and consulted with his chiefs, who 
often interviewed me on the subject. I spared no effort to 
influence them against their foolish principle, bringing all the 
arguments I could think of to bear out the truth. Although 
they formed no decided opinion at the time, years later, when 
I met Stremboom again, he informed me with much glee that 
when Indala again sent to demand the annual tribute, as they 
were late in bringing it, the king told him that he and the 
chiefs all wished to see what Indala could do with the river 
first, and that Indala had better satisfy their minds on this 
point before they would pay any more tribute, either in corn 
or girls. It happened that during this particular year the river 
behaved phenomenally well, a fact which satisfied the king and 
the chiefs beyond question that Indala was a humbug, although 
they had been very anxious at times during the season, casting 
the blame on each other for taking my advice, until the experi¬ 
ment proved a success; and then they favoured Indala with 
a message that must have taken a good deal of the conceit 
out of him. 
I cannot help thinking, with a grim sense of joy, of Indala’s 
discomfiture on this occasion, and would have given a good pro¬ 
portion of my none too plentiful dollars at the time to have had 
a bird’s-eye view of that scoundrel exercising his sorceries over 
the river, backed by his irrepressible quartette of rascals, who 
must have sustained a rude shock to their belief in the mortified 
king’s power, and been much astonished when the witchcraft 
failed, and the river flowed on and on in undisturbed majesty and 
