amine the stockade.

The whole was something like a lobster-trap without a top, or like one
of the salmon weirs to be found running out into the sea on the Welsh
coast. It was made of stout branches driven deeply into the ground,
with lighter ones interlaced horizontally between the upright poles.
The opening was at least fifty paces in breadth, gradually narrowing,
and as the horns of the living crescent drew inwards, it was the only
outlet for the frightened game. It led to a deep square pit, which must
have taken the tribe long to dig, whose sides were quite smooth and
perfectly steep. Once in it, the deer could not get out, and towards
this all the game was being driven. The process was a slow one, and it
was afternoon before the long line of the Matabele approached. It was a
curious sight. The shouts, screams, and yells of the men as they drove
before them antelopes of all kinds, and then the excitement of those
near the trap, as herd after herd would come down, find the barricade,
and, suspecting danger, turn back. At first the different animals kept
to themselves, but as the circle narrowed, quaggas, zebras, antelope of
various forms would become mixed together, while the Matabele would rush
among them, brandishing their long spears, and frantically striking
their ox-hide shields, shrieking, howling, and spearing right and left,
until the affrighted wretches, surrounded on every side by the yelling
savages, took the only outlet left them, and dashing madly down the path
between the stockades, leaped wildly into the pit, falling pell mell in.
On they came, quaggas, koodoos, springbok, hartebeest, the shouting and
spearing becoming wilder. Hundreds turned, and forced their way through
the ever narrowing circle of yelling Matabele, the spears sticking in
their bloody hides, while fuller and fuller became the pit, until it was
heaped with the dead, dying, and maimed. There was the
ferocious-looking gnu, the painted hide of the zebra, the
graceful-limbed springbok, the long spiral horned leche, all heaped
together in one boiling, seething mass of pain and suffering, the
Matabele above, with savage cries, spearing those who in their agony
tried to climb the sides of the pit, while still the yelling savages
continued driving herd after herd, until, like the fire worshippers'
trap, in Moore's beautiful poem, the pit was full and would hold no
more. There was high feasting in the Matabele camp that night, for the