thoughts dwelling upon my mysterious visitor,
who I felt sure could be none other than Machenga himself, stolen
surreptitiously away from the mysterious rites of the fetish house in
the hope of cajoling a rifle out of me; and I began to wonder whether
the two white men to whom he had referred as having visited Mashonaland
many moons ago--one only of whom went out of the country again--could by
any chance have been my friend Henderson and his Boer partner, Van
Raalte. And I also greatly wondered what the fellow could possibly have
meant by his mysterious talk of a time before the Mashonas came to the
country, when it was inhabited by a people whom he named the Monomotapa,
who built great cities of brick and stone, worked the gold mines, and
made gold ornaments for their women. Pondering thus, I became a little
vexed with myself for my untactful treatment of the man, whom I had
permitted to leave me in a distinctly bad temper, instead of humouring
and conciliating him, as I felt persuaded I might easily have done.

However, I was not altogether without hope that, after a night's
reflection, the fellow might reopen negotiations, when I would do my
best to establish friendly relations with him, if only for the purpose
of learning a little more about the mysterious Monomotapa, the ruins of
one of whose towns I had actually seen and examined. And, so thinking,
I gradually dropped off to sleep; and, as was not very surprising,
dreamed a wonderful dream, wherein I found myself living and moving
among the Monomotapa, who proved to be a very highly civilised race,
possessing a vast amount of knowledge of many things that we moderns
only guessed at in the most vague fashion. And I was plunged deep in
the midst of a most astounding adventure when Piet awoke me with the
intelligence that it was sunrise, and that the regiments in the outlying
cantonments were already astir and preparing to enter Gwanda, to assist
in the celebration of the great annual festival. I enquired whether
there was any sign of our visitor of the previous night, and was told
that there was not, at which information I was sorrier than ever for my
hasty behaviour; for it was now evident that Machenga definitely refused
the gifts that I had set out for his acceptance, and for a savage to
refuse a gift is tantamount to a declaration of enmity, and I could ill
afford to make an enemy of anyone in Mashonaland, still less of so
powerful a personage as Machenga, t