PLAYS xm a 
NC'PAE, A YOUNG ZULU IN HIS DANCING 
I) HESS, 
This is the portrait of a young man I painted at Jnanda, giving a favourable idea of the handsome and 
pleasing countenances of many of the young Zulus. He is dressed for a dance, and wears black ostrich plumes, mingled 
with bunches of lowry feathers, upon his head. The long pendent ornaments on each side of the face are composed 
of beads, black and pink, two colours of which the Kafirs, especially the Amakdsa, are particularly fond. The fringes 
of beads attached to the leg below the knee are grotesque yet tasteful decorations, and the lively colours of the beads 
afford a strong contrast to the dark hue of the skin. A Zulu lad, similar to the one here represented, can generally 
be persuaded to work for an European settler within the colony of Natal, for the value, either in beads or money, 
of five or six shillings a month, and many boys will apprentice themselves as servants to the whites for a whole year 
on promise of a cow at the expiration of the term. 
TWO OF KING PANDA’S DANCING GIRLS. 
The decorations of the king's dancing girls consist of enormous quantities of beads of every variety of size and 
colour displayed upon their persons in the form of necklaces, bracelets, and bandages, according to the prevailing fashion 
or the taste of the wearer. On grand occasions the amount of beads worn by the king’s women is almost incredible, 
a single dress having been known to consist of fifty pounds weight of these highly-valued decorations, so as to render 
it a matter of some difficulty as well as personal inconvenience for the wearer to dance under the accumulated weight 
of her beads. The possession of gaudy beads of every colour appears to be the highest ambition ot a Kafir woman: 
“ Her fond heart fluttering high with anxious schemes 
To gain the enchanting beads that haunt her dreams!" 
The annual dances are held without the kraal, the king with his women appearing all arrayed in beads, and their 
arms encircled by brass ornaments. The king is saluted by a shout “Byate!" and the dancing commences, accompanied 
by songs which are composed by the king, and vary every year. Each man holds in his hand a knob-stick; the feet 
regulate the time, and the action of their bodies is often very graceful. The male dancers frequently wear the cocoons 
of a large green moth ( bombyx ), with very small pebbles in them, which are strung together at their ankles, and make 
a jingling noise. There are sometimes as many as a thousand dancers present, forming a ring three deep, whilst the 
women in ranks of twenty, compose the central phalanx. The women, thus surrounded, bend their bodies to the clap 
of hands which takes place simultaneously, stamping both feet together, and raising their voices to the highest pitch. 
In the distance of the sketch is seen a portion of one of the king's large kraals. The standing figure has her head 
decorated with mimosa thorns; the sitting one with the quill* of the porcupine. 
“ Intombie,” in the Zulu language, signifies a virgin, or a young girl before she is betrothed in marriage. The 
costume of the “intombie” is remarkably simple, consisting merely of an ornamental girdle round the loins, worked with 
variously coloured heads; this denotes her virgin innocence, and should she he promised in marriage to some young man 
in a neighbouring kraal, she immediately wears the “ issikaka,” a long petticoat of dressed hide ; and after the marriage 
ceremony is performed, her dress becomes still more an article of covering until the period of the birth of her first 
