UM HA MBIT AND UMPENCtULU, 
YOUNG ZULUS IN TIIEIR DANCING COSTUME. 
The plumed and kilted Zulu, in all the gay trappings of furs and beads with which he adorns himself on festive 
occasions, is perhaps as picturesque, if not more so, than any other race on the African Continent. The variety of 
costume adopted by these people, differing in the style of skins and feathers and the colour and arrangement of the 
beads with which they decorate their persons, is usually a matter of taste amongst the individual wearers, some displaying 
much more grace than others in the adjustment of their rude ornaments. 
Umbambu, the figure on the left, is a young man belonging to a kraal near Umlazi, decorated, like his companion, 
for a marriage-dance: a noble plume of eagle-feathers surmounts his head, which is bound round by the tail of a 
tiger-cat. The skirts, composed of furs and the tails of various wild animals, remind us of the Highland kilts in 
their general appearance, if we except the nature of the material. The long appendages on each side of the kilt are 
formed of narrow strips of ox-hide, twisted in alternate angles. The knee and ankle tufts are the hair and tails of 
the Angora goat. 
Tire other figure, Umpengulu, shews the back view of the dress, which is often handsomely worked with heads of 
various colours. In his hair is an ivory snuff-spoon, and a black ostrich plume depends from the back of his head. 
In the hands of both the young men are knob-kirris,* which are used in beating time during the dance. The scene 
is in a kraal near Umlazi. shewing the entrance to the eattle-lold. 
On one occasion, during my visit to the Zulu country, a certain Induna having heard that a “ togati man,” or 
witch-doctor,f was in the neighbourhood, “who could write him in a book and take him across the sea,” set out on a 
journey of forty miles to search for me, in order that I might take his portrait. This is the only instance I have 
met with amongst these people of an anxiety to be represented. They almost invariably evinced a fear of an art they 
could not clearly comprehend, and many shrank hack with dread at the idea of being painted, saying that they should 
die in consequence. One little girl actually went into hysterics through fear, and I was obliged to pacify her with 
beads. Another subject of my pencil, himself a witch-doctor, wearing a necklace of medicine berries with a selection 
of small bones and panther’s whiskers, came to me on the morning following the magic operation, saying that he was very 
had in the back, and insisted on it that I had bewitched him! 1 was sitting at my breakfast, under a mimosa-tree, at 
the time, partaking of alternate morsels of antelope and hippopotamus flesh, cooked on the ramrod of my gun, stuck 
crosswise over the fire ; old Mathlapi, “ the great black one,” was sitting near us; we had only one fork, and by some 
accident it wounded him slightly in the foot: the burly savage immediately seized the miscreant fork, declaring that it 
was his prisoner, and became his property in consequence of having scratched his foot. Remonstrance was useless, ami 
Mathlapi probably eats his beef with the fork at the present moment. 
* It is remarkable that similar instruments, used by the New Hollanders, are called by them wirris. 
t The term applied by the Zulus to my power of representing the human countenance, which they ascribed to witchcraft, or dealings with evil spirits 
When I took a sketch of Mathlapi, lie said I was “making his shadow.” 
