A curious custom prevails in the households of the white-shield warriors. When one of them goes out to war, his wife takes his sleeping mat, his pillow, and his spoon, and hangs them upon the wall of the hut. Every morning at early dawn she goes and inspects them with loving anxiety, and looks to see whether they cast a shadow or not. As long as they do so, she knows that her husband is alive; but if no shadow should happen to be thrown by them, she feels certain that her husband is dead, and laments his loss as if she had actually seen his dead body. This curious custom irresistibly reminds the reader of certain tales in the “Arabian Nights,” where the life or death of an absent person is known by some object that belonged to him--a knife, for example--which dripped blood as soon as its former owner was dead. Before Tchaka’s invention of the heavy stabbing-assagai, there was rather more noise than execution in a Kaffir battle, the assagais being received harmlessly on the shields, and no one much the worse for them. But his trained troops made frightful havoc among the enemy, and the destruction was so great, that the Zulus were said to be not men, but eaters of men. The king’s place was in the centre of the line, and in the rear, so that he could see all the proceedings with his own eyes, and could give directions, from time to time, to the favored councillors who were around him, and who acted as aides-de-camp, executing their commissions at their swiftest pace, and then returning to take their post by the sacred person of their monarch. The commander of each regiment and section of a regiment was supposed to be its embodiment, and on him hung all the blame if it suffered a repulse. Tchaka made no allowance whatever for superior numbers on the part of the enemy, and his warriors knew well that, whatever might be the force opposed to them, they had either to conquer or to die; and, as it was better to die fighting than to perish ignominiously as cowards after the battle, they fought with a frantic valor that was partly inherent in their nature, and was partly the result of the strict and sanguinary discipline under which they fought. After the battle, the various officers are called out, and questioned respecting the conduct of the men under their command. Reward and retribution are equally swift in operation, an immediate advance in rank falling to the lot of those who had shown notable courage, while those who have been even suspected of cowardice are immediately slain.