years even since I was a boy, and followed you when you went up
among the Boers and took their country for the Queen.

Why did you do this, my father? I will answer, who know the truth. You
did it because, had it not been done, the Zulus would have stamped out
the Boers. Were not Cetywayo's impis gathered against the land, and was
it not because it became the Queen's land that at your word he sent them
murmuring to their kraals? (1) To save bloodshed you annexed the country
beyond the Vaal. Perhaps it had been better to leave it, since "Death
chooses for himself," and after all there was killing--of our own
people, and with the killing, shame. But in those days we did not guess
what we should live to see, and of Majuba we thought only as a little
hill!

Enemies have borne false witness against you on this matter, Sompseu,
you who never erred except through over kindness. Yet what does that
avail? When you have "gone beyond" it will be forgotten, since the sting
of ingratitude passes and lies must wither like the winter veldt. Only
your name will not be forgotten; as it was heard in life so it shall be
heard in story, and I pray that, however humbly, mine may pass down with
it. Chance has taken me by another path, and I must leave the ways
of action that I love and bury myself in books, but the old days and
friends are in my mind, nor while I have memory shall I forget them and
you.

Therefore, though it be for the last time, from far across the seas I
speak to you, and lifting my hand I give your "Sibonga" (2) and that
royal salute, to which, now that its kings are gone and the "People of
Heaven" are no more a nation, with Her Majesty you are alone entitled:--

Bayete! Baba, Nkosi ya makosi!
Ngonyama! Indhlovu ai pendulwa!
Wen' o wa vela wasi pata!
Wen' o wa hlul' izizwe zonke za patwa nguive!
Wa geina nge la Mabun' o wa ba hlul' u yedwa!
Umsizi we zintandane e ziblupekayo!
Si ya kuleka Baba!
Bayete, T' Sompseu! (3)

and farewell!

H. RIDER HAGGARD.

To Sir Theophilus Shepstone, K.C.M.G., Natal. 13 September, 1891.

(1) "I thank my father Sompseu for his message. I am glad that he has
sent it, because the Dutch have tired me out, and I intended to
fight them once and once only, and to drive them over the Vaal.
Kabana, you see my impis are gathered. It was to fight the Dutch
I called them together; now I send them back to their homes."
--Message from Cet