faces were set
towards a great mountain, towering high above its fellows, called
Pagadi's Kop--Pagadi being a powerful chief who had fled from the Zulus
in the early days of the colony, and had ever since dwelt loyally and
peacefully here in this wild place, beneath the protection of the Crown.
Messengers had been duly sent to inform him that he was to receive
the honour of a visit, for your true savage never likes to be taken by
surprise. Other swift-footed runners had come back with the present of
a goat, and the respectful answer, so Oriental in its phraseology, that
"Pagadi was old, he was infirm, yet he would arise and come to greet his
lords." Every mile or so of our slow progress a fresh messenger would
spring up before us suddenly, as though he had started out of the earth
at our feet, and prefixing his greeting with the royal salute, given
with up-raised arm, "Bayete! Bayete!"--a salutation only accorded to
Zulu royalty, to the governors of the different provinces, and to Sir
T. Shepstone, the Secretary for Native Affairs--he would deliver his
message or his news and fall into the rear. Presently came one saying,
"Pagadi is very old and weak; Pagadi is weary; let his lords forgive him
if he meet them not this day. To-morrow, when the sun is high, he will
come to their place of encampment and greet his lords and hold festival
before them. But let his lords, the white lords of all the land from the
Great Mountain to the Black Water, go up to his kraal, and let them
take the biggest hut and drink of the strongest beer. There his son, the
chief that is to be, and all his wives, shall greet them; let his lords
be honoured by Pagadi, through them." An acknowledgment was sent, and we
still rode on, beginning the ascent of the formidable stronghold, on the
flat top of which was placed the chief's kraal. A hard and stiff climb
it was, up a bridle path with far more resemblance to a staircase than a
road. But if the road was bad, the scenery and the vegetation were wild
and beautiful in the extreme. Now we came to a deep "kloof" or cleft
in the steep mountain-side, at the bottom of which, half hidden by the
masses of ferns and rich rank greenery, trickled a little stream; now
to an open space of rough ground, covered only with huge, weather-washed
boulders. A little further on lay a Kafir mealie-garden, where the
tall green stalks were fairly bent to the ground by the weight of the
corn-laden heads, and beyond that, again