e to be
on the best of terms with my Kaffirs, and where I went they were ready
to go without asking any questions. The man whom I had selected to be
their captain under me was a Zulu of the name of Mavovo. He was a
short fellow, past middle age, with an enormous chest. His strength was
proverbial; indeed, it was said that he could throw an ox by the horns,
and myself I have seen him hold down the head of a wounded buffalo that
had fallen, until I could come up and shoot it.

When I first knew Mavovo he was a petty chief and witch doctor in
Zululand. Like myself, he had fought for the Prince Umbelazi in the
great battle of the Tugela, a crime which Cetewayo never forgave him.
About a year afterwards he got warning that he had been smelt out as a
wizard and was going to be killed. He fled with two of his wives and a
child. The slayers overtook them before he could reach the Natal border,
and stabbed the elder wife and the child of the second wife. They were
four men, but, made mad by the sight, Mavovo turned on them and killed
them all. Then, with the remaining wife, cut to pieces as he was, he
crept to the river and through it to Natal. Not long after this wife
died also; it was said from grief at the loss of her child. Mavovo did
not marry again, perhaps because he was now a man without means, for
Cetewayo had taken all his cattle; also he was made ugly by an assegai
wound which had cut off his right nostril. Shortly after the death of
his second wife he sought me out and told me he was a chief without a
kraal and wished to become my hunter. So I took him on, a step which I
never had any cause to regret, since although morose and at times given
to the practice of uncanny arts, he was a most faithful servant and
brave as a lion, or rather as a buffalo, for a lion is not always brave.

Another man whom I did not send for, but who came, was an old Hottentot
named Hans, with whom I had been more or less mixed up all my life.
When I was a boy he was my father's servant in the Cape Colony and my
companion in some of those early wars. Also he shared some very terrible
adventures with me which I have detailed in the history I have written
of my first wife, Marie Marais. For instance, he and I were the only
persons who escaped from the massacre of Retief and his companions by
the Zulu king, Dingaan. In the subsequence campaigns, including the
Battle of the Blood River, he fought at my side and ultimately received
a good share o