“By this time the storm had quite abated; the heavy clouds were rolling slowly from over the rising moon; the drops from the lofty trees fell heavily on the dense bush below; thousands of insects were chirping merrily; and there, louder than all the rest, was the regular rise and fall of some score of Kaffirs. I had already penetrated three hundred yards or more into the bush, when I discovered a large and newly erected Kaffir hut, with a huge fire blazing in its centre, just visible through the dense smoke that poured forth from the little semicircular aperture which served for a doorway. These huts of the Kaffirs are formed of trellis-work, and thatched; in appearance they resemble a well rounded haycock, being, generally, eight or ten feet high at the vertex, circular in form, and from twenty to twenty-five feet broad, with an opening like that of a beehive for a doorway, as before described. “But, as it was near midnight, it seemed to me that my visit might not be altogether seasonable. However, to have turned back when so near the doorway might have brought an assagai after me, since the occupants of the hut would have attributed a rustling of the bushes, at that late hour, to the presence of a thief or wild beast. I therefore coughed aloud, stooped down, and thrust my head into the open doorway, where a most interesting sight presented itself. “Fancy three rows of jet-black Kaffirs, ranged in circles around the interior of the hut, sitting knees and nose altogether, waving their well oiled, strongly built frames backward and forward, to keep time in their favorite ‘Dingan’s war-song;’ throwing their arms about, and brandishing the glittering assagai, singing and shouting, uttering a shrill piercing whistle, beating the ground to imitate the heavy tramp of marching men, and making the very woods echo again with their boisterous merriment. “My presence was unobserved for a moment, until an old gray-headed Kaffir (an Umdodie) pointed his finger toward me. In an instant, the whole phalanx of glaring eyes was turned to the doorway; and silence reigned throughout the demoniac-looking group. A simultaneous exclamation of ‘Molonga! Molonga!’ (white man! white man!) was succeeded by an universal beckon for me to come in and take a place in the ring. This of course I complied with; and, having seen me comfortably seated, they fell to work again more vociferously than ever, till I was well near bewildered with the din, and stifled with the dense smoke issuing from the huge fire in the centre of the ring.” Dingan’s war-song, which is here mentioned, is rather made in praise of Dingan’s warlike exploits. To a Kaffir, who understands all the allusions made by the poet, it is a marvellously exciting composition, though it loses its chief beauties when translated into a foreign language, and deprived of the peculiar musical rhythm and alliteration which form the great charms of Kaffir poetry. The song was as follows:--