Nada the Lily

and of his love for Nada, the most beautiful of Zulu women. It is long; but you are here for many nights, and, if I live to tell it, it shall be told. Strengthen your

for many years, but that is not my name. Few have known it, for I have kept it locked in my breast, lest, thought I live now un

Listen, my father; bend your ear to me and listen. I am Mopo-ah! I felt you start; you start as the regiment of the Bees started when Mopo walked before their ranks, and from the assegai in his hand the blood of Chaka (1) dropped slowly to the earth. I a

st wicked men who ever lived. He was killed in the year 18

? "Dingaan died

t forever waiting for the world to perish. But I also was on the Ghost Mountain. In those days my feet still could travel f

you. I stabbed Chaka for the sake of my sister, Baleka, the mother of Umslopogaas, and because he had m

they are gone beyond. I cut the strings that tied them to the world. They fell off. Ha! ha! They fell off! Perhaps they are falling still, perhaps they creep about their desolate kraals in the skins of snakes. I wish I knew the snakes that I might crush them with my heel. Yonder, beneath us, at the burying place of kings, there is a hole. In that hole lies the bones of Chaka, th

hite men if you will. How old am I? Nay, I do not know. Very, very old. Had Chaka lived he would have been as old as I. (2) None are living whom I knew when I was a boy. I am so old that

attained by a native. The writer remembers talking to an aged Zulu wo

e-bodied men numbered one full regiment in Chaka's army, perhaps there were between two and three thousand of them, but they were brave. Now they ar

h a white face that would follow her about. She carried my little sister Baleka riding on her hip; Baleka was a baby then. We walked till we met the lads driving in the cows. My mother called the white-faced cow and gave it mealie leaves which she had brought with her. Then the boys went on with the cattle, but the white-faced cow stopped by my mother. She said that she would bring it to the kraal when she came home. My mother sat down on the grass and nu

o you!" sai

wered my mother. "

ep in," said the woman.

and what is your peo

wife of Senzangacona, of the

zangacona had killed some of our warriors and taken many of our cattle

r, wife of a dog of a Zulu!" she cried; "begone, or I

ked up and spoke slowly, "There is a cow by you with milk dropping from its udder; will you not ev

ot," said

l you not, then, give us a cup of wat

a dog; go and seek

breast and scowled. He was a very handsome boy, with bright black eye

d yonder," and he nodded towards the country where the Zulu people liv

red Unandi; "but the path is long, we

er. My mother wanted to catch me, for she was very angry, but I ran past her and gave the gourd to the boy. Then my mother ceased trying to interfere, only she beat the woman with her tongue all the while, saying that evil had come to our kraals from her husband, and she felt in her heart that more evil

dian spi

not offer the water to his mother. He drank two-thirds of it himself; I think that he would have drunk it all had not his thirst been slaked; but when he had done h

id to me as a big rich man spea

y name," I

the name of

me of my tribe, t

reat with me; they shall eat up the whole world. And when I am big and my people are big, and we have stamped the earth flat as far as men can travel, then I will remember your tribe-the tribe of the Langeni, who would not give me and my mother a cup of milk when we were weary. You see this gourd; for every drop it can hold the blood of a man shall flow-the blood of one of your men. But because you gave m

ks like a man, does he? The calf lows like a bull. I will teach him another n

stick in his hand, and hit her so hard on the head that she fell down

Even now they are coming true. In the one he told how the Zulu people should rise. And say, have they not risen? In the other he told how they should fall; and they did fall. Do not the white men gather themselv

r words I will sp

d the stick had made ran down her face on to her breast, and I wiped it away with grass. She sat for a long while thus, while the

summer, behind him the land was black as when the fires have eaten the grass. I saw our people, Mopo; they were many and fat, their hearts laughed, the men were brave, the girls were fair; I counted their children by the hundreds. I saw them again, Mopo. They were bones, white bones, thousands of bones tumbled together in a rocky place, and he, Chaka, stood over the bones and laughed till the earth shook. Th

ut I held my peace, for I w