ful enough some of them
were. By a piece of grim humour, he had named this axe 'Inkosi-kaas',
which is the Zulu word for chieftainess. For a long while I
could not make out why he gave it such a name, and at last I
asked him, when he informed me that the axe was very evidently
feminine, because of her womanly habit of prying very deep into
things, and that she was clearly a chieftainess because all men
fell down before her, struck dumb at the sight of her beauty
and power. In the same way he would consult 'Inkosi-kaas' if
in any dilemma; and when I asked him why he did so, he informed
me it was because she must needs be wise, having 'looked into
so many people's brains'.

I took up the axe and closely examined this formidable weapon.
It was, as I have said, of the nature of a pole-axe. The haft,
made out of an enormous rhinoceros horn, was three feet three
inches long, about an inch and a quarter thick, and with a knob
at the end as large as a Maltese orange, left there to prevent
the hand from slipping. This horn haft, though so massive, was
as flexible as cane, and practically unbreakable; but, to make
assurance doubly sure, it was whipped round at intervals of a
few inches with copper wire -- all the parts where the hands
grip being thus treated. Just above where the haft entered the
head were scored a number of little nicks, each nick representing
a man killed in battle with the weapon. The axe itself was made
of the most beautiful steel, and apparently of European manufacture,
though Umslopogaas did not know where it came from, having taken
it from the hand of a chief he had killed in battle many years
before. It was not very heavy, the head weighing two and a half
pounds, as nearly as I could judge. The cutting part was slightly
concave in shape -- not convex, as it generally the case with
savage battleaxes -- and sharp as a razor, measuring five and
three-quarter inches across the widest part. From the back of
the axe sprang a stout spike four inches long, for the last two
of which it was hollow, and shaped like a leather punch, with
an opening for anything forced into the hollow at the punch end
to be pushed out above -- in fact, in this respect it exactly
resembled a butcher's pole-axe. It was with this punch end,
as we afterwards discovered, that Umslopogaas usually struck
when fighting, driving a neat round hole in his adversary's skull,
and only using the broad cutting edge for a circular sweep