resting upon the mane. A number of indunas,
councilors, and officers stood around the king in respectful attitudes,
or moved about quietly, and silently.

Tshaka's mother, Mnande, sat on the ground some distance away, her ear
strained to catch every word chat fell from her son's lips. A few yards
behind her five young girls crouched on their knees and elbows, each
with an earthen pot of beer, or a skin of curdled milk before her. As
each new-comer arrived within a certain distance of the throne, he
flung his spear and shield to the ground, and then came forward. When
he reached within about twenty paces of Tshaka, he held his right hand
high over his head and called out "Bayete," which is the Zulu royal
salute. He then advanced and prostrated himself before the King's feet.

Tshaka was a man of magnificent build. He sat perfectly naked except
for a bunch of leopard tails slung from his waist, and a few charms
fastened to a thin cord around his neck.

Kondwana, commander of the 'Nyatele regiment, an induna of the Abambo
tribe, was called before the king. He approached, under the customary
obeisance, and then stood up.

"You will take," said Tshaka, "what remains of the 'Nyatele regiment (a
regiment that had suffered very severely in a recent campaign from
fever in the coast swamps above St. Lucia Bay, as well as from
slaughter by the spear), and go to the country beyond the mountains of
the Amaswazi, where the green and yellow stones from which the red
metal (copper) is smelted, are dug out of the ground. You will bring
back so much of these stones as will cover, when heaped up, the skins
of three large oxen. You will return before the Summer rains have
fallen. Go."

Kondwana was a distinguished man. He had, years previously, fought
against Tshaka, but since his tribe, the Abambo, had made submission,
and had been incorporated into the Zulu nation, he had served his new
master with faithfulness and zeal. But one of the awkward conditions of
savagery is this, that whenever a subordinate shows any extraordinary
capacity, and consequently attains to a position of influence, his
master is apt to regard him with jealousy and fear, and will therefore
often destroy him ruthlessly on the first shadow of a pretext. In
jealousy and mistrust of capable subordinates, the average savage
potentate resembles Louis the Fourteenth of France, of pious memory,
who could never bear to have a really capable man near his throne in a
po