which belted the slopes of the hills.

"Hallo, hallo! What's all this?" said Dawes, suddenly, as they rounded
a spur.

There was a prodigious flapping of wings, and a cloud of great white
vultures rose from the ground to join a number of others which were
wheeling lazily overhead. At sight of the horsemen, however, the
swooping circles widened and the great birds darted off. In a moment
they seemed to disappear.

"Here's a chap who can't fly!" cried Gerard, eagerly, putting his horse
at one of the _aasvogels_, who, thoroughly gorged, could only waddle
along like a puffin. And then a cry of horror escaped him, and his face
paled. Boiling gently down the slope of the ground, where the vulture
had let go of it, was a severed head--the head of a native child of
about nine or ten years of age. Grim and gory, with the eyes picked out
by the carrion birds, the frightful object rolled. Gerard felt nearly
sick with horror. At the same time Dawes's horse, shying violently,
nearly unseated his rider.

The slope of the hill here was covered by a low, bushy scrub. Lying
about among this, contorted into ghastly attitudes, were several bodies,
all natives, and representing all ages and sexes. They had been torn by
the vultures, and ripped and mangled by their slayers, and the
appearance they presented to those who thus came upon them wholly
unexpectedly in the midst of the wilderness was inexpressibly hideous
and horrible. Three of the bodies were those of full-grown men, the
rest women and children--thirteen persons in all. They were covered
with assegai-stabs, out of which the blood seemed yet to ooze, and they
were all ripped up, a circumstance which pointed to their slayers being
of Zulu nationality. Why had these poor creatures, thus travelling
peaceably through the country--for fragments of mats and other articles
pointed to the probability of it being a family trek--been thus fallen
upon and ruthlessly butchered--men, women, and children, even to the
month-old baby speared again and again on its mother's back? Who had
done it? The two white discoverers of the massacre looked at each
other, and the mind of each shaped the same reply--Igazipuza.

A shadow passed between them and the sun, then another and another. The
vultures, having become accustomed to the cause of their first alarm,
had gathered again, impatient to drop down to their horrible feast. To
Gerard it seemed that all the virtue had gone out of