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'E's a nice woon t' taalk o' marryin', whan 'is awn wife caan't live wi' 'im, nor 'is awn daughter, neither. And 'oo alse talled yo'? 'Twasn' Moother?" "Naw. It wasn' yore moother." "An' 'twasn' mae, Jim, and navver will bae." "'Twas Dr. Rawcliffe." "'E? 'E's anoother. 'Ooo's 'e married? Miss Gwanda? Nat' e!" "Yo' let t' doctor bae, Essy. 'E's right enoof.
The result of the mission was therefore, on the whole, quite satisfactory, the king having not only accorded me permission to enter his country and kill game in it, but also entrusted my messenger with an invitation to me to visit him at Gwanda, and remain there as long as I pleased.
It was a beautiful and very fertile country, taken as a whole, and the nearer that we drew to Gwanda the more forcibly was this fact borne in upon me, as also was the further fact that the Mashonas were a very powerful nation, so far at least as numbers were concerned; for every kraal at which we arrived was bigger and more important in every way than the one that preceded it.
"Did yo expact 'im t' kape yo, yo gawpie? Did yo think you'd nowt to do but t' laay oop at t' Vicarage an' 'ave th yoong laadies t' do yore wark for yo, an' t' waait on yo 'and an' foot? Miss Gwanda t' mak' yore bafe-tae an' chicken jally and t' Vicar t' daandle t' baaby? "'Oo's goan t' kape yo? Mae? I woonna kape yo an' I canna' kape yo. Yo ain' t' baaby!
This being the case, and the river having fallen nearly a foot since Piet and I had first arrived at the ford, I seized the favourable opportunity, and safely transferred the wagon and all my other belongings to the Mashona side of the river upon the afternoon of the day of Piet's return; and, following the course of the stream to which I attributed the formation of the ford and which, Piet informed me, led direct to Gwanda outspanned for the night some six miles to the northward of the Limpopo.
Early in the forenoon of the eleventh day after our departure from Gwanda we reached the Zambezi, at a point where, by a stroke of good luck, the river chanced to be fordable; and, having got the wagon and all my other belongings safely across to the left bank, I immediately outspanned, and then proceeded to distribute liberal largesse among the subordinate officers of the impi, gave Mapela a specially handsome present, and so parted upon excellent terms from my Mashona friends, not without a qualm of regret and of wistful surmise as to my chances of ever again seeing them.
He paused and left me for a moment while the wagon was getting into motion and the impi was forming up round it; then, when we were fairly under way, he came to my side again, and remarked: "Au, Chia'gnosi! thine arrival at Gwanda was well timed; for many are still alive who, but for thee, would have lain dead in the great square before the setting of yonder sun.
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.
The ground between the two mountains which I took to be a pair of long-extinct volcanoes and the range on our left rose steadily, and therefore somewhat retarded our progress when we continued our trek on the following day; but about two o'clock in the afternoon we reached the summit of the slope and saw before us a valley or basin, roughly circular in shape and some twenty miles in diameter, hemmed in on all sides by hills, some of which were lofty enough to be snow-capped on their summits; and in the very centre of this valley lay Gwanda, the Kraal or Place of Lomalindela, the king of the Mashona nation.
The "witch doctors" or magicians of the nation numbering in all something over a hundred all of whom were then in Gwanda for the purposes of the ceremony, would assemble at sunset that same evening in a sort of fetish house; and there, under the leadership and direction of one Machenga, the head or chief witch doctor, would perform certain mysterious rites, and submit themselves to a certain mysterious form of treatment, lasting the entire night, which, it was generally understood, would enable them infallibly to "smell out" or detect every individual who might harbour evil thoughts or designs against the king.
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