“Whilst I was here a trader of the name of Horn passed, and had to wait when he was a few miles on the road to ask leave to proceed, as all waggons from Natal are now stopped for fear of the disease, and Horn had to explain who he was and where he came from. Horn, I think, is the man who opened the Zambesi trade, but is at present trading with the Matabele. A lion killed one of his oxen on the Inkwesi one night whilst he was waiting here, and a dozen of them took fright and ran away. I assisted in looking for them, and followed up the spoor next day till late in the afternoon, and must have been close to the oxen, but there was a Scotch mist, and it was a wretched evening, so, leaving three Kafirs to follow and sleep on the spoor, I returned to the waggons. Next day the Kafirs returned without the oxen, and thus much time was lost. The day after this Horn’s partner followed the spoor to the water, but from the water followed up, by mistake, some fresh buffalo spoor, and slept on it, to come the following morning on to a herd of buffalo, which rather astonished him. At last Stoffel set off with him, about four or five days after the oxen had strayed, and they succeeded in recovering them. [Illustration: DRY BED OF THE INKWESI RIVER.] “Whilst Stoffel was away the dogs began to bark late one night, and a man appeared at the fire in a miserable plight. He was a rebellious induna, or headman, whom the king had ordered to be killed. There are a certain number of indunas, who have certain districts given them to rule over under the king, and if they presume too much on their authority they are put to death without much trial. Some of them would be insufferable in their conduct to white men if the king did not keep them in order. This particular man, I believe, the king had given fair warning to, and told him to take a horse and fly the country, but instead of taking one he took two, and he was brought before the king, who thought it best to make an end of the matter. They took him outside the town, and hacked him with their axes, leaving him for dead. What must have been intended for the _coup de grâce_ was a cut in the back of the head, which had chipped a large piece out of the skull, and must have been meant to cut the spinal cord where it joins the brain. It had, however, been made a little higher than this, but had left such a wound as I should have thought no one could have survived. It is wonderful, however, how hard Kafirs are. When I held the lanthorn to investigate the wound I started back in amazement to see a hole at the base of the skull, perhaps two inches long and an inch and a half wide, and I will not venture to say how deep, but the depth too must have been an affair of inches. Of course this hole penetrated into the substance of the brain, and probably for some distance. I dare say a mouse could have sat in it.