ined their crest, and
below them saw a beautiful mimosa-clad plain which the guides told them
was the Sisa Country.

"The Promised Land at last! It makes me feel like another Moses," said
Thomas, waving his arm.

"Oh, isn't it lovely!" exclaimed Tabitha.

"Yes, dear," answered her mother, "but--but I don't see any town."

This indeed was the case because there was none, the Sisa kraal, for it
could not be dignified by any other name, being round a projecting
ridge and out of sight. For the rest the prospect was very fair, being
park-like in character, with dotted clumps of trees among which ran,
or rather wound, a silver stream that seemed to issue from between two
rocky koppies in the distance.

These koppies, the guides told them, were the gates of Sisa Town. They
neglected to add that it lay in a hot and unhealthy hill-ringed hollow
beyond them, the site having originally been chosen because it was
difficult to attack, being only approachable through certain passes.
Therefore it was a very suitable place in which to kraal the cattle
of the Zulu kings in times of danger. That day they travelled down the
declivity into the plain, where they camped. By the following afternoon
they came to the koppies through which the river ran, and asked its
name. The answer was _Ukufa_.

"_Ukufa?_" said Thomas. "Why, that means Death."

"Yes," was the reply, "because in the old days this river was the River
of Death where evil-doers were sent to be slain."

"How horrible!" said Dorcas, for unfortunately she had overheard and
understood this conversation.

By the side of the river was a kind of shelf of rock that was used as a
road, and over this they bumped in their wagon, till presently they were
past the koppies and could see their future home beyond. It was a plain
some miles across, and entirely surrounded by precipitous hills, the
river entering it through a gorge to the north. In the centre of this
plain was another large koppie of which the river _Ukufa_, or Death,
washed one side. Around this koppie, amid a certain area of cultivated
land, stood the "town" of the Christian branch of the Sisa. It consisted
of groups of huts, ten or a dozen groups in all, set on low ground near
the river, which suggested that the population might number anything
between seven hundred and a thousand souls.

At the time that our party first saw it the sun was sinking, and had
disappeared behind the western portion of the barricade of h