and
bethought me that I would bathe in this stream before I trekked
from that hateful spot, for to me it had become hateful. Calling
my driver, who was awake and talking with the voorloopers, for
they knew what was passing at the kraal and were alarmed, I told
them to get the oxen ready to start as I would be back presently.
Then I set off for the stream and, after a longish walk,
scrambled down a steep ravine to its banks, following a path made
by Kaffir women going to draw water. Arrived there at last I
found that it was in flood and rising rapidly, at least so I
judged from the sound, for in that deep, tree-hung place the
light was too faint to allow me to see anything. So I sat down
waiting for the dawn and wishing that I had not come because of
the mosquitoes.

At length it broke and the mists lifted, showing that the spot
was one of great beauty. Opposite to me was a waterfall twenty
or thirty feet high, over which the torrent rushed into a black
pool below. Everywhere grew tall ferns and beyond these graceful
trees, from whose leaves hung raindrops. In the centre of the
stream on the edge of the fall was a rock not a dozen feet away
from me, round which the water foamed. Something was squatted on
this rock, at first I could not see what because of the mist, but
thought that it was a grey-headed baboon, or some other animal,
and regretted that I had not brought a gun with me. Presently I
became aware that it must be a man, for, in a chanting voice, it
began to speak or pray in Zulu, and hidden behind a flowering
bush, I could hear the words. They were to this effect--

"O my Spirit, here where thou foundest me when I was young,
hundreds of years ago" (he said hundreds, but I suppose he meant
tens), "I come back to thee. In this pool I dived and beneath
the waters found thee, my Snake, and thou didst wind thyself
about my body and about my heart" (here I understood that the
speaker was alluding to his initiation as a witch-doctor which
generally includes, or used to include, the finding of a snake in
a river that coils itself about the neophyte). "About my body
and in my heart thou hast dwelt from that sun to this, giving me
wisdom and good and evil counsel, and that which thou hast
counselled, I have done. Now I return thee whence thou camest,
there to await me in the new birth.

"O Spirits of my fathers, toiling through many years I have
avenged you on the House of Senzangacona, and never again