than usually welcome. There is a pleasure in the canvas-sheltered meal,
in the after-pipe and evening talk of the things of the day that has
been and those of the day to come, here, amid these wild surroundings,
which is unfelt and unknown in scenes of greater comfort and higher
civilisation. There is a sense of freshness and freedom in the
wind-swept waggon-bed that is not to be exchanged for the softest couch
in the most luxurious chamber. And when at length the morning comes,
sweet in the scent of flowers, and glad in the voice of birds, it finds
us ready to greet it, not hiding it from us with canopy and blind, as is
the way of cities.

The scene of the coming spectacle of this bright new day lies spread
before us, and certainly no spot could have been better chosen for
dramatic effect. In front of the waggons is a large, flat, open space,
backed by bold rising ground with jutting crags and dotted clumps of
luxuriant vegetation. All around spreads the dense thorn-bush, allowing
but of one way of approach, from the left. During the morning we could
hear snatches of distant chants growing louder and louder as time wore
on, and could catch glimpses of wild figures threading the thorns,
warriors hastening to the meeting-place. All through the past night the
farmers for miles around had been aroused by the loud insistent cries
of the chief's messengers as they flitted far and wide, stopping but a
moment wherever one of their tribe sojourned, and bidding him come, and
bring plume and shield, for Pagadi had need of him. This day, we may be
sure, the herds are left untended, the mealie-heads ungathered, for the
herdsmen and the reapers have come hither to answer to the summons of
their chief. Little reck they whether it be for festival or war; he
needs them, and has called them, and that is enough. Higher and higher
rose the fitful distant chant, but no one could be seen. Suddenly there
stood before us a creature, a woman, who, save for the colour of her
skin, might have been the original of any one of Macbeth's "weird
sisters." Little, withered, and bent nearly double by age, her activity
was yet past comprehension. Clad in a strange jumble of snake-skins,
feathers, furs, and bones, a forked wand in her outstretched hand, she
rushed to and fro before the little group of white men. Her eyes gleamed
like those of a hawk through her matted hair, and the genuineness of her
frantic excitement was evident by the quivering flesh