In their marauding transactions there is a curious code of honour amongst them. Suppose a woman to be stolen from a tribe, the injured individuals lie in wait for the oxen of the thieves, and when captured take them to the chief, who allots them as follows: 1. One is slaughtered for general consumption and joviality. 2. The rightful owner of the stolen woman is next indemnified. 3. The rest of the tribe are questioned as to whether they have any grievance to be rectified. 4. If there are any oxen over they are scrupulously returned to their owners. Their code of morality is far below the standard amongst the Zulus in Matabeleland. Many of the customs have a curious Eastern tinge; for example, hired labour is unknown, and if a man wants assistance in his fields he brews a quantity of beer, bids his neighbours come, and the better the beer the more labourers he will get. This custom is still common in Asia Minor and the East, where wine is the substitute for beer. Lutzi did not interest us much; it is a scattered and poor-looking kraal on a bleak hill, with large stone semicircles, where the men of the village can sit and smoke sheltered from the wind; so on hearing that the ’Mtoko’s kraal was really about six miles off, we set out for it about ten o’clock on the following morning. There is much that is different in this country from what we had seen elsewhere in Mashonaland, enough almost to point to a difference of race; the language, too, we found so different that we could understand but little of it ourselves, though the ordinary Makalanga terms for commodities such as mazai for eggs, makaka for milk, &c., were still in vogue. Probably the different circumstances of life will account for the difference in character. The people do not live in kraals huddled together on the top of rocks, but in small scattered kraals of from six to twenty huts dotted all over the country, where agriculture may take them, arguing a degree of prosperity and security to property which we had not seen elsewhere in Mashonaland. In these little kraals there is generally a hut raised on poles in the midst, which acts as a kind of watch-tower. They told us that the Matabele never penetrate as far as this, and that the only enemy they fear is the Portuguese half-caste Gouveia, whose territory lies over the mountains to the east; but his attacks were successfully repulsed by the old ’Mtoko, who had thereby established such a reputation for valour that none of his neighbours durst interfere with him.