g following the return of
'Mfuni we forded the river and entered upon the somewhat risky journey
across Zululand, taking things fairly easy, as I wished to keep my team
of zebras in good condition, in case it should be necessary to hurry,
later on, after my interview with the king.

Two days later, about mid-afternoon, we arrived at Umgungundhlovu (or
the Multitude of Houses), and before we reached it the leading features
of the landscape began to assume an appearance of familiarity, until
finally I beheld with my bodily eyes the entire scene, complete down to
the smallest detail, which Mafuta, the Basuto nyanga, had revealed to me
in a vision some six months before. There was the great "town"--
containing, I suppose, quite two thousand huts--built upon the crest of
a gently rising hill, and completely surrounded by a stout, high
palisade with an open gateway in it through which passed a number of
people going about their business, and merely pausing for a minute or
two to gaze in wonder at my handsome team of zebras; and there, too,
close at hand, was the singular-looking hog-backed kopje, with its
straggling bushes and its tumbled masses of dark rock, upon which were
perched some fifty or sixty vultures that seemed to be quite at home
there. Little did I dream of the ghastly tragedy of which that weird
kopje had been the scene a few months earlier, when, on the preceding
sixth of February, the treacherous and ruthless king had caused the
massacre upon it of the ill-fated Boer general, Pieter Retief, and some
sixty of his followers; otherwise I should have been a good deal more
uneasy in my mind than I actually was when I gave the order to outspan.

Yet, although I had no knowledge of it, the memory of that tragedy, and
the fear lest the whites should eventually determine to avenge it,
proved of the utmost service to me in my negotiations with the savage
monarch; for when, adopting my usual tactics of "bluffing" boldly in my
dealings with savages, I informed Dingaan bluntly that my object in
visiting him was to demand the surrender of the white 'ntombozaan whom
he held in captivity, I saw at once that, for some reason which I could
not then guess, he was very greatly perturbed. But, like the savage he
was, he also attempted to "bluff", so that the matter soon resolved
itself into a "bluffing match" between us, in which, although I did not
know it, I held the advantage. First the king indignantly denied all
knowled