nt of such
cattle and goods as I did not want.
Tota, I of course took with me. Fortunately by this time she had almost
recovered the shock to her nerves. The baby Harry, as he was afterwards
named, was a fine healthy child, and I was lucky in getting a
respectable native woman, whose husband had been killed in the fight
with the baboons, to accompany me as his nurse.
Slowly, and followed for a distance by all the people, I trekked away
from Babyan Kraals. My route towards Natal was along the edge of the
Bad Lands, and my first night's outspan was beneath that very tree where
Stella, my lost wife, had found us as we lay dying of thirst.
I did not sleep much that night. And yet I was glad that I had not died
in the desert about eleven months before. I felt then, as from year
to year I have continued to feel while I wander through the lonely
wilderness of life, that I had been preserved to an end. I had won my
darling's love, and for a little while we had been happy together. Our
happiness was too perfect to endure. She is lost to me now, but she is
lost to be found again.
Here on the following morning I bade farewell to Indaba-zimbi.
"Good-bye, Macumazahn," he said, nodding his white lock at me. "Good-bye
for a while. I am not a Christian; your father could not make me that.
But he was a wise man, and when he said that those who loved each other
shall meet again, he did not lie. And I too am a wise man in my way,
Macumazahn, and I say it is true that we shall meet again. All my
prophecies to you have come true, Macumazahn, and this one shall come
true also. I tell you that you shall return to Babyan Kraals and shall
not find me. I tell you that you shall journey to a further land than
Babyan Kraals and shall find me. Farewell!" and he took a pinch of
snuff, turned, and went.
Of my journey down to Natal there is little to tell. I met with many
adventures, but they were of an every-day kind, and in the end arrived
safely at Port Durban, which I now visited for the first time. Both Tota
and my baby boy bore the journey well. And here I may as well chronicle
the destiny of Tota. For a year she remained under my charge. Then she
was adopted by a lady, the wife of an English colonel, who was stationed
at the Cape. She was taken by her adopted parents to England, where
she grew up a very charming and pretty girl, and ultimately married a
clergyman in Norfolk. But I never saw her again, though we often wrote
to e
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