“If they wished to do so there is nothing to prevent them, and never has been. As they march, they could march from their border to this city or to Durban in a little more than twenty-four hours. Their only fear is, that the English will come with an army ‘to make them pay taxes.’ They say they will rather die than do so. The king says the same. Almost every man has a gun. Guns and ammunition are cheaper at any military kraal in Zululand than at Port Natal. These goods are imported by Tonga men, who come in large gangs from Delagoa Bay, for white merchants. An Enfield rifle may be had for a sheep of a Tonga man; many have breech-loaders. The missionaries, whose principal occupation was trading, deal in ammunition. The missionaries have recently lost most of their converts, who have gone trading on their own account. Without these converts the missionaries cannot do business, and they have left the country, except Bishop Schreuder, who has gone back, that it may not be said that a white man is not safe there. Cetewayo says that he has asked the missionaries to stop. They have certainly not been turned out or threatened. Their going makes the Zulus think that we are about to invade the country. “Nothing but gross mismanagement will bring about a quarrel between England and the Zulus.”—(P. P. [C. 2144] pp. 215, 216). [78] This is apparently a figure of speech, since Luneburg, near which the kraal was being built, would seem by the map _not_ to lie “to the rear”—as seen from Zululand—of Utrecht, where Sir T. Shepstone was staying. [79] Compare the account of the delay on the part of the Boer Government when Mr. Keate proposed to arbitrate. See last chapter, p. 182. [80] 2144, p. 191. [81] The Zulus, of course, would not have appreciated the convenience of a table and chairs; they had no “documents” to lay upon the former; and their opinion of the comfort of the latter is best expressed by the well-known Zulu saying that, “_Only Englishmen and chickens sit upon perches._” The mats provided for them were, therefore, a proper equivalent to the tables and seats placed for the other delegates. [82] Sir Bartle Frere gives a very unfair account of this matter-of-course fact when he transmits to the Secretary of State the above despatch, “informing me of the incomplete result, in consequence of the attitude of Cetshwayo’s representatives at the Commission of Inquiry.” [83] The king’s kraal at that time. [84] The homestead specially spoken of in this case does not appear to have been destroyed or injured till March, 1879, in the midst of the war, nor was any human being, white or black, belonging to these farms, killed by this “savage, unbridled, revengeful nation,” before the war began.