Frequently Ikomo would try to interrupt our work, and so frighten our black diggers from other villages that they ran away, and we had to collect a fresh team. On one occasion, whilst digging upon the fortress, we disturbed a large rock, which slipped. On it was perched one of their granaries, which promptly fell to pieces, and the contents were scattered far and wide. In vain we offered to pay for the damage done; almost in no time we were surrounded by a screaming crowd of angry men and women, with Ikomo at their head, brandishing assegais and other terrible weapons of war. For a moment the affair looked serious; all our blacks fled in haste, and we, a small band of white men surrounded by the foe, were doubtful what course to pursue. At length we determined to stand their insults no longer, and seizing whatever was nearest—spade, pick, or shovel—we rushed at them, and forthwith Ikomo and his valiant men fled like sheep before us, clambering up rocks, chattering and screaming like a cageful of monkeys at the Zoo. Sir John Willoughby and one or two men from Fort Victoria chanced to come over that day to visit us, and on hearing of our adventure he summoned Ikomo to a palaver, and told him that if such a thing happened again his kraal would be burnt to the ground and his tribe driven from the hill; and the result of this threat was that Ikomo troubled us no more. Ikomo’s kraal occupies a lovely situation on Zimbabwe Hill, with huts nestling in cosy corners amongst the rocks, from the top of which lovely views can be obtained over the distant Bessa and Inyuni ranges on the one side, and over the Livouri range, and Providential Pass on the other, whilst to the south the view extends over a sea of rugged kopjes down into the Tokwe valley. From this point the strategical value of the hill is at once grasped, rising as it does sheer out of a well-watered plain, unassailable from all sides, the most commanding position in all the country round. The village is festooned with charming creepers, bignonia and others, then in full flower; rows of granaries decorate the summit, and in the midst are some of those quaint trees which they use as larders, hanging therefrom the produce of their fields neatly tied up in long grass packages, which look like colossal German sausages growing from the branches.