Tuys and the king leaped forward to intercept her, but were too late. She threw up her hands with a shriek and went over the edge! Tuys and I were much excited by this, but Buno and his indunas seemed to be rather annoyed. Buno explained that women had done this before and seemed to regard their action as a desecration of the Place of Execution. After many questions Tuys found out all about it and explained to me. "This was new to me," he said, as we climbed down from the cliff, "and I thought I knew all there was to know about the Swazis. But I never before heard about women throwing themselves off the Place of Execution. "Mzaan Bakoor, this is how it is. You know the Swazis are very strict with their women. If a wife, no matter if she be one of thirty or forty wives, has anything to do with any man but her husband, her life is forfeited. Also the child, if there be one, must die. If there is no child, she dies alone. It is the husband's right to kill the unfaithful wife. If he does so, no one has anything to say and he is not held for murder. But he can do worse than kill his wife. He can refuse to kill her, and then she becomes an outcast and the prey of any one. She may even be killed by her people, for there have been cases where Swazi women have killed an unfaithful wife when the husband refused to slay her. "Always, if she can escape, the woman will take to the hills. There her condition is as bad as it can be. She has to live on berries and what game she can catch, and her life is miserable. She is an outcast, and men who are caught going to her in the hills share her degradation. "This woman who died to-day was the youngest wife of a little chief who refused to kill her when he found that she was faithless. She escaped to the hills some weeks ago and lived the life of a hunted beast. Finally she must have made up her mind to end it all. It is fortunate for her that she had not been taught by the missionaries that she had a soul!" That is the moral code of Swaziland. In all the years I have known the Swazis I have never heard of its being broken without the death penalty. However, civilization will some day reach into Swaziland and then this code will disappear. That will be the end of the Swazis. We reached camp to find the long shadows of the setting sun dropping across the Valley of Heaven. Buno bade Tuys an affectionate farewell and the impis gave us the royal salute as they started up the hill for Lebombo. This was the first time I saw King Buno, and he left me memories that nothing can ever efface. I saw him again next year and was in Lebombo when he died and Queen Labotsibeni was appointed regent. Nothing much happened on our return journey to the Valley of Reeds, except that Oom Tuys showed me how he could shoot. During the second day's trek we ran up on the high veldt for a space and jumped some springbok. They sprang up suddenly out of the brown grass, as they always do, and went off like a streak of light.