The three Kafirs were talking together as he ascended the bank, and Doda related to him the tradition of the Sunless Kloof.
It was here that the first white man had been seen by the Amakosas. “He came,” said Doda, “from there,” pointing westward. “The tribes whom this wild rider—for he was on horseback—passed on the way were too much terrified to stop him—the covering on his head was supposed to be part of it, but when he lifted it, it caused still greater surprise. He was seen to get off his horse at one time, and the people followed the spoor. They had never seen shoes then; and the print of his feet, so different to our own, made them believe he was not formed like ourselves. He carried in his hand a long hollow weapon, from which there came forth fire, smoke, and thunder; and the horse, being an animal never before seen by Kafirs, caused deeper dread. The natives shunned him as a being not of earth. Some killed cattle on his approach, and placed it in his way as a peace-offering, and, in return, he would leave beads and tobacco beside it. Some honoured him as a wizard; from him the ‘Wizard’s Glen’ takes its name, for his footprints were discovered there one day. He had nearly reached the sea, when Narini’s people, believing him to be some unnatural animal, determined to kill him, and, watching him from the rocks, hunted him down, and assegaied him. Since then, men have said that he was one of a tribe of white people, who had been sent by their chief to the country beyond Shiloh: almost all were murdered. Some found their way back by the Winterberg, but this one must have intended, to seek the Zooluh country, where it was known that a race with white skins, but hair dark as the crow’s wing, exchanged beads for slaves.” (The Portuguese settled on the south-east coast.)
Doda ceased to speak, and Zoonah and Lulu commenced singing a wild air, the first words of which were intended to imitate the clatter of a horse’s hoof.
“Ite cata, cata mawooka,
Na injormane.”
“Clatter clatter, he is going;
He goes with a horse, he goes with speed.”
Over and over again they repeated this inharmonious, monotonous “Ite cata, cata mawooka,” and then drew the embers of the fire together, and prepared to set to work anew upon some fresh steaks of meat.
So, sleeping, and eating, and talking alternately, these savages passed the day in the Sunless Kloof. Lyle was content to wait till nightfall ere he advanced, and as he was able to understand much of the language of these children of the wilderness, he listened not without interest to a conversation between Doda and Lulu, the latter never having been located, like Doda and Zoonah, among the missionaries. He had lately, however, paid, a visit to one of the larger frontier towns, where he had heard an account of a criminal’s execution; he had not seen it himself, and therefore was sceptical.
“I do not doubt,” said Doda, “for I have been told by the teacher that the English always kill a murderer.” (The literal translation is, “one murders another.”)
“And I,” remarked Zoonah, “have conversed with people who have described the manner in which they kill them by hanging them with string by the neck on poles.”
Lulu, after thinking for some minutes, observed, “The English must have more people than they can manage?”
“Why do you say so?” asked Doda, who, being the elder, took the lead in the conversation.