We were permitted to rest in camp next day, though parties of Fingoes were out in all directions, burning and destroying the deserted Kaffir kraals. The whole afternoon they kept pouring into camp laden with their spoils; large quantities of _amazimba_, Kaffir corn,[8] ornaments, head-dresses, and every kind of Kaffir traps and toggery. Several women were also brought in prisoners, but sent about their business after an interview with the General's interpreter, much to the disappointment of their Fingoe captors, who, finding they were not to have the pleasure of putting them to death as they had anticipated, and highly incensed at their being allowed to return unharmed to their own people after the trouble they had been at in taking them, followed the liberated captives out of the camp, heaping on them every curse and abuse in the Kaffir vocabulary, and thrashing them with their _keeries_ (long heavy sticks), which, however, was summarily put a stop to by us, as soon as noticed. The part of the camp allotted to these most zealous allies presented a variety of novel and striking scenes. On all sides the eye encountered black fellows of stalwart frame, arraying themselves in the ornaments and insignia of despoiled _Inkosi_ and _Amapakati_,[9] singing to themselves in a deep guttural chant, and dancing in a slow jerking step to some monotonous measure. In a wide clear space a ring of some three score of these athletic forms, blankets and karosses thrown aside, began a war-dance to the strange chorus of their deep voices, accompanied by regular tapping on a shield of ox-hide. The performers shook their gleaming assegais in the air, and jerked their supple frames to and fro, lifting their feet alternately, or jumping with both, as they sung, in perfect harmony, a wild air, swelling from a low organ-like hum to the full power of their lungs; hissing like serpents, and creeping with bent bodies round and round, and in and out, as if on the spoor of the enemy; then breaking out into cries and yells, stabbing furiously at the imaginary victim in their centre, and shaking their bodies backward and forward, from the knees upward, till the perspiration streamed from every pore. Each verse of the war-song, which was an improvised commemoration of their late achievements, was given by a single voice in a loud recitative, and then caught up by the whole in an astounding chorus, Ezani, ezani nina Amaxosa, Sobula noko,--sobula noko,-- Sobula-lá, no-kó![10] In another quarter, round a large iron pot of boiled Kaffir corn, a knot of gormandizers were collected, throwing handful after handful of the swelled and steaming grain down their throats with a steady perseverance perfectly astonishing; while stretched around lay others, watching them with looks of mingled helplessness and envy, their own stomachs already gorged to the utmost limit.