ould shut him forever from the outside
world, as they wound their way now where the cliffs beetled overhead so
as to shut out the heavens, now along some dizzy ledge, with the dull
roar of the mountain stream wafted up on icy gusts from far below. He
suffered severely from the cold too, he who had breathed the moist,
torrid heat of equatorial forests for so long,--and his wound became
congealed and stiff. Yet he bore himself heroically, even as the
Ba-gcatya themselves, who, their scanty clothing notwithstanding, seemed
to feel the cold not one whit, chatting and laughing and singing while
they marched. Finally the ground descended once more, and at
length--while he was nodding in slumber at the dawn of day, during one
of their brief rests--Ngumunye touched him on the shoulder and beckoned
that he should accompany him. Laurence complied, and when they had
gained the brow of a gently rising ridge beyond, an exclamation of
wonder and admiration burst from his lips.

"Lo!" said the induna, pointing down with his knob-stick. "Lo! there
lies the land of the People of the Spider; there rests the throne of the
Strong Wind that burns from the North. Lo! his dwelling,--Imvungayo."

CHAPTER XXI.

"THE STRONG WIND THAT BURNS FROM THE NORTH."

From where they stood the ground fell away in great wooded spurs to a
broad level valley, or rather plain,--shut in on the farther side by
rolling ranges of forest-clad hills. The valley bottom, green and
undulating, was watered by numerous streams, flashing like bands of
silver ribbon in the golden glow of the newly risen sun. Clustering here
and there, five or six together, were kraals, circular and symmetrical,
built on the Zulu plan, and from their dome-shaped grass huts blue lines
of smoke were arising upon the still morning air. Already, dappling the
sward, the many coloured hides of innumerable cattle could be seen
moving, and the long drawn shout and whistle of these who tended them
rose in faint and harmonious echo to the height whence they looked down.
Patches of broad, flag-like maize, too, stood out, in darker squares,
from the verdancy of the grass, and bird voices in glad note made merry
among the cool, leafy, forest slopes. Coming in contrast to the steamy
heat, the dank and gloomy equatorial vegetation, the foul and noisome
surroundings of the cannibal villages, this smiling land of plenty did
indeed offer to him who now first beheld it a fair and blithesome sight.