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Thus then it came about, my father, that I, Mopo, believing my daughter Nada to be dead, little guessed that it was she who was named the Lily in the kraals of the Halakazi, and whom Dingaan the king desired for a wife. Now after I had thwarted him in this matter of the sending of an impi to pluck the Lily from the gardens of the Halakazi, Dingaan learned to hate me.
He also had instructions to let some of his veldtcornets ride to the Kaffir kraals, which were close to the English camp, in order to tell these Kaffirs that he had had orders to come to me with fifty men, but that when he arrived I had commanded him to return to his district, because I was going to march with my commando to Winburg.
They were building stone kraals for their sacred trusts of kine, chipping and carving away at their totem hawks and their crocodiles, breaking limbs and necks over a sky-high tower, with stones for their bricks, and no slime to make them mortar. How they sang over their work, and how it grew!
Cetywayo on receiving the message at once disbanded his armies and sent them to their kraals.
By the time you have just taught them, with infinite pains and trouble, how to do their work, they depart, and you have to begin it all over again. I frequently see the chiefs or indunas of chiefs passing here on their way to some kraals which lie just over the hills. These kraals consist of half a dozen or more large huts, exactly like so many huge beehives, on the slope of a hill.
Cetewayo nodded heavily, and answered "My impis were broken to pieces on the plain of Ulundi; the cowards ran from the bullets as children run from bees. My kraals are burnt and I, the King, with but a faithful remnant fly for my life. The prophecy of the Black One has come true. The people of the Zulus are stamped flat beneath the feet of the great White People."
Along the edge of the stream to our left were placed Kaffir kraals, built in orderly groups with verandahs, after the Basutu fashion, and a very large part of the entire space of land was under cultivation. All of this I noted at once, as well as the extraordinary richness and depth of the soil, which for many ages past had been washed down from the mountain heights.
Frequently during our journey we outspanned just outside the Kafir kraals, and often entered into them; one of my companions speaking the native, as well as the Dutch languages very fluently. We were always received by both Boers, and Kafirs, very kindly. Sometimes we were accompanied by a large number of Kafirs for days.
As they drew near they saw that the Umpondwana were much terrified at the sight of them, for from all the kraals, of which there were many on the slopes of the mountain, they ran hither and thither like ants about a broken nest, carrying their goods and children upon their shoulders, and driving herds of cattle in towards the central stronghold.
The Zulus had had no experience in attacking forts, and it was very evident that they looked upon the stockaded farm as they would upon one of their own kraals. They might have seen the cattle driven in, but they considered, as they were sure to capture the place, that it would be an advantage to have them all together, caught as it were in one net.
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