Information was brought to the resident magistrate’s court at Verulam that a native had been severely assaulted in a location some miles away, and I was ordered by the resident magistrate, together with the clerk of the court, to proceed to the wounded man’s kraal and investigate the matter. Our path to the kraal, the home of the dying man, led through the passes of one of the wildest, most rugged and most picturesque regions to be found in the whole of Natal. Here, owing to the proximity of the sea, we found the vegetation clothing the rocky defile to be most luxuriantly dense and tropical. Tramping along the narrow Kafir path in order to reach our destination, we had to push aside fantastic wreaths of tangled convolvuli, force our way past festoons of monkey rope parasites and other climbers, and whilst avoiding the wild date tree on the one hand, had on the other to shun the prickly thorns of the crimson-fruited _amatungulu_. Our tardy progress scared the barking baboon in his rocky home, startled the chattering monkey from his lofty perch and the timid buck from his grassy lair, whilst the brilliant-plumaged _uqualaquala_ and other feathered denizens of the bush flew away, alarmed at our approach. To describe the lovely, ever-changing scenery which broke upon our view is almost impossible; the majestic milk wood, the deadly _euphorbia_, the quaint Kafir boom, the spreading fan-palm, the aloe, cactus and wild banana, all lending their presence to produce an effect not easily to be effaced. Woe betide us, however, if we did not keep a sharp lookout for the deadly snakes coiled in the long grass at our feet, or for those which, hanging like green tendrils from the trees above, were ever ready to drop upon our heads. On our arrival we found the man reported as seriously assaulted, whose name, by the way, was Umjaba, sitting quietly smoking _bhang_ at the gate of his kraal, with a blanket round his shoulders, seemingly astonished at the excitement that he was creating. On my asking him, through the court interpreter who accompanied us, what was the matter, he denied that any assault whatever had been committed on him, and as he neither showed me nor could I see any marks on his person, we returned to Verulam. Next morning, however, news was brought to the magistracy that he was dead, and I was again ordered out to examine the body and report upon the circumstances. The facts which I gathered were as follows: Two months before, somewhere about the end of the year 1866, a native doctor of the Amatonga tribe named Kongota, accompanied by a young native who carried his pack of medicines and charms, came to the kraal of an elderly native named Nokahlela, who resided in the Inanda division, not far from Verulam. As is customary amongst natives, the doctor was well received and hospitably entertained by Nokahlela and his family, which consisted of several wives and children of all ages, from infants in arms to grown up sons and daughters.