The lion of ’Mtoko is the totem of the tribe. We asked the old priest if we should get into trouble if we shot a lion whilst in his country. ‘If a lion attacks you,’ he replied, ‘you may shoot it, for it could not be one of ours; our lions will do the white man no harm, for they are our friends.’ There was a charming amount of dignity and sophistry about the old Mondoro. We felt that he was a far better man to rule the country than his nervous, superstitious nephew. Once a year this old Mondoro (the name Mondoro is common in this country both to the sacred lions and the priest) sacrifices a bullock and a goat to the Maklosi or luck spirit of their ancestors. Formerly this ceremony took place at the residence of the old chief, and now here at Lutzi; much beer is drunk on the occasion, and it takes place in February, about the same time as the Matabele war-dance. There is much more of the old spirit of the race about the Mondoro. He gave us the names of three generations of ’Mtokos who had ruled here before his brother—a rare instance of pedigree in this country; but the royal residence, Lutzi, is a miserable place, consisting of two little kraals crowning the two summits of a bare granite hill. One tree of sickly growth stood there, decorated, for what reason I could not discover, with part of a woman’s bark dress, grass roots, hair, and other oddments. Doubtless they were luck signs too, but we could gain no information on this point. Evidence of festivities was also present in the shape of drums and long chains of grass cases for beads, which they hang round their calves to rattle at the dances. On a hill opposite stood a single hut, where an outlaw had lived till quite recently, they told us. Before we took our leave the Mondoro presented us with a goat, regretting that, owing to the bad times, he could not give us a handsomer present. We now understood several points which had been a mystery to us before—the constant and rather deferential way in which the ’Mtoko had spoken of his uncle, and the reason why, in the first instance, our guides had told us that the ’Mtoko dwelt at Lutzi. Also we now seemed thoroughly to grasp the strange cult of the lion god, a cult probably carrying us back to the far-distant ages, when the Arabian tribes invented the system of totems, and called the stars by their names. [33]