Although Nkandhla had been selected by the rebel leaders as their _terrain_, that was not to say outbreaks would not occur in other parts of the Colony as well. Indeed, one of the objects of making Sigananda's stronghold the principal rallying-point was to encourage overt acts of rebellion in other parts from knowledge of the fact that, so long as the fastness was held, it was available as a general headquarters and place of refuge. As an illustration of this, the disaffected men of Ngobizembe's tribe who, after being punished in the middle of March by Leuchars--being by themselves powerless to resist the troops--made off from Mapumulo and joined Bambata at Nkandhla. Mehlokazulu and other Chiefs, as has already been seen, broke from Nqutu and adjoining districts to do the same. The principle upon which all these men acted seems to have been that, where local confederates were not strong enough to offer resistance on the spot, either from want of numbers or suitable fastnesses, they would move to Nkandhla, but where the prospects were not unfavourable, as at Umsinga and Mapumulo, each with a teeming Native, and sparse European, population, they would resolve to try their chances there and then, in the hope that, by creating additional and widely-separated areas of disturbance, the difficulties of the troops would be increased, when other tribes would follow one or other of the alternatives referred to, always with the ulterior motive of causing the country to rise _en bloc_. In view of the importance of Umsinga and Mapumulo, both districts being within forty to forty-five miles of Nkandhla by such routes as Native pedestrians ordinarily travel, it is well to understand the position at those places. In Umsinga district there were, in 1906, ten tribes, by far the largest being that of Kula. The total huts owned by members of his tribe was upwards of 4,500.[241] The huts (in the same district) of the other nine tribes together did not amount to 4,000. To so great an extent did Kula over-shadow the other Chiefs, that it is unnecessary to make more than passing reference to the latter. Kula was a young man, grandson of Ngoza, once famous throughout Natal and Zululand as Sir Theophilus Shepstone's principal induna. Ngoza, after serving in a position of trust and responsibility for many years, was appointed Chief over a tract of country vacated in 1858 by a Chief Matshana[242] to escape arrest. The ward was 450 square miles in extent, almost the whole falling within one magisterial division.