The same berries, two or three of them, may be threaded on to a cord, as also a rabbit tail, the whole being tied as a necklace round the throat to ward off evil.
Other customs, not less quaint, are observed by mothers-in-law.
A sprig of wild asparagus is often stuck in the thatch over the doorway of a hut to safeguard the home.
The black markings on the face and the wearing of the berries represent formal suppression of ordinary personal feeling or the deliberate assumption of an ugly, callous, and unsympathetic disposition.
When husbands or sons are killed, various other customs are conformed to by women.
Turning to the soldiers themselves, we find that when any of the enemy are killed in battle, those responsible for the deaths proceed to rip open the deceased's stomach. This is done as it is feared the deceased's unreleased spirit will invest the one who slew him and turn him into a raving lunatic. He must also strip or, at least, partly strip the corpse of its clothing and wear it himself until, having cleansed himself in accordance with various formalities, he can resume his own.
Those who have killed others, eat and live entirely apart from the main body. This seclusion continues for many days. During this time, they observe other formalities before being finally washed with drugs and allowed to associate with their comrades. They are treated with great respect, the best and fattest portions of meat are served out to them, and they are entitled to wear the decorations previously referred to.
A coward, on the other hand, is subjected to the greatest indignities. His meat is handed to him after having been dipped in cold water. This causes girls to laugh at him. Not infrequently his fiancée will break off the engagement, on the ground that he has so far unmanned himself as to have become a woman. Being a woman, he naturally must not look to another woman to become his wife! To such extent is this carried, that one hears of cases where girls actually uncover themselves in his presence by way of shaming him.
And so one could go on describing the inner life of this remarkable race, but sufficient has been said to enable the reader to understand those with whom the Natal Government was, in 1906, called on to deal. The character of their tactics and military habits and customs has been roughly outlined in the foregoing sketch, which, as everyone who lives in the country knows, is descriptive not of a system of life gone by, but of one that was largely revived and practised by those who took part in the fighting, rebels as well as loyalists. The present is understood by studying the past, or, as a Zulu would say: Inyati i buzwa kwa ba pambili (news of the buffalo is sought of those who are ahead). Thus the chapter which, at first, seemed to deal only with old bones is found, on examination, to be a picture of the people as they were at the beginning of the campaign.