have the customs of every tribe by heart.
I've travelled over every mile of South Africa, and Central and East
Africa too. I was in both the Matabele wars, and I've seen a heap of
other fighting which never got into the papers. So what I tell you you
can take as gospel, for it is knowledge that was not learned in a day.'

He puffed away, and then asked suddenly, 'Did you ever hear of Prester
John?'

'The man that lived in Central Asia?' I asked, with a reminiscence of a
story-book I had as a boy. 'No, no,' said Mr Wardlaw, 'he means the
King of Abyssinia in the fifteenth century. I've been reading all
about him. He was a Christian, and the Portuguese sent expedition
after expedition to find him, but they never got there. Albuquerque
wanted to make an alliance with him and capture the Holy Sepulchre.'

Arcoll nodded. 'That's the one I mean. There's not very much known
about him, except Portuguese legends. He was a sort of Christian, but
I expect that his practices were as pagan as his neighbours'. There is
no doubt that he was a great conqueror. Under him and his successors,
the empire of Ethiopia extended far south of Abyssinia away down to the
Great Lakes.'

'How long did this power last?' I asked wondering to what tale this was
prologue.

'That's a mystery no scholar has ever been able to fathom. Anyhow, the
centre of authority began to shift southward, and the warrior tribes
moved in that direction. At the end of the sixteenth century the chief
native power was round about the Zambesi. The Mazimba and the
Makaranga had come down from the Lake Nyassa quarter, and there was a
strong kingdom in Manicaland. That was the Monomotapa that the
Portuguese thought so much of.'

Wardlaw nodded eagerly. The story was getting into ground that he knew
about.

'The thing to remember is that all these little empires thought
themselves the successors of Prester John. It took me a long time to
find this out, and I have spent days in the best libraries in Europe
over it. They all looked back to a great king in the north, whom they
called by about twenty different names. They had forgotten about his
Christianity, but they remembered that he was a conqueror.

'Well, to make a long story short, Monomotapa disappeared in time, and
fresh tribes came down from the north, and pushed right down to Natal
and the Cape. That is how the Zulus first appeared. They brought with
them the story of Prester John, but by thi