The following morning, after breakfast, we set off for Lutzi once more, armed with presents for the lion priest, and exceedingly curious about him. Benoula was there before us, and everyone was expecting our arrival. Presently we were ushered into a large but rather dilapidated hut, where sat a venerable-looking old man, who received us and our presents with great cordiality. We seated ourselves on the ground, forming a curious assemblage: the Mondoro and his son, ’Mkateo, his enormously fat daughter Tourla, Benoula, and one or two indunas, our three selves, and our interpreter. ‘I am the ’Mtoko,’ was almost the first thing the old man said, explaining how he considered himself the rightful heir to the chiefdom. ‘Next year, when the crops are gathered in, I shall return to the kraal where my brother died, and assume the command of the country.’ We soon saw the state of things, which explained many points that had previously been mysterious. ’Mtokoland was threatened with a grave political quarrel, and all the elements of civil war were present. The elders of the country all recognise the Mondoro as their chief; whilst younger men, with everything to gain and little to lose, affect to follow the chief whose kraal we had visited, and whom they speak of as Bedapera at Lutzi, his own name, as distinguished from the dynastic name of ’Mtoko. In his position as religious head of the community lies the Mondoro’s strength. ‘Here is the Zimbabwe of our land, here the annual sacrifice to the Maklosi of our ancestors now takes place;’ that is to say, wherever the chief lives, and wherever the annual sacrifice takes place, there is the Zimbabwe of the chiefdom. Then we questioned him about the lion god, and he gave us to understand that the Mondoro or lion god of ’Mtoko’s country is a sort of spiritual lion which only appears in time of danger, and fights for the men of ’Mtoko; all good men of the tribe, when they die, pass into the lion form and reappear to fight for their friends. It is quite clear that these savages entertain a firm belief in an after-life and a spiritual world, and worship their ancestors as spiritual intercessors between them and the vague Muali or God who lives in Heaven.