Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 11, 2025
This, it appeared, was the Mazitu method of embracing, an honour which Brother John did not seem at all to appreciate. Then followed long speeches, washed down with draughts of thick native beer.
I had to take this route, as my people have a very vivid idea of the danger of going northwards towards the Mazitu. We made more southing than we wished. One day beyond Zomba and W.S.W. is the part called Chindando, where the Portuguese formerly went for gold. They don't seem to have felt it worth while to come here, as neither ivory nor gold could be obtained if they did.
I saw its enormous grey shape on the top of the trunk, I saw it pass me like a flash, running upright as a man does, but with the head held forward, and noted that the arm nearest to me was swinging as though broken. Then as I turned I heard a scream of terror and perceived that it had gripped the poor Mazitu, Jerry, who walked last but one of our line which was ended by Mavovo.
This kept us waiting in the hot sun among heated rocks, and the chief, being a great ugly public-house-keeper looking person, excused his incivility by saying that his brother had been killed by the Mazitu, and he was afraid that we were of the same tribe. On asking if Mazitu wore clothes like us he told some untruths, and, what has been an unusual thing, began to beg powder and other things.
"Why do you say that, Quatermain?" By way of answer I repeated to him the story which Hans said he had heard from the old woman at Beza, the town of the Mazitu.
Here I may explain that they were slaves not meant for exportation, but men kept to cultivate Hassan's gardens. Fortunately I found that two of them belonged to the Mazitu people, who it may be remembered are of the same blood as the Zulus, although they separated from the parent stock generations ago. These men talked a dialect that I could understand, though at first not very easily.
So they were, in a sense, for the Zulu hunters began to get out of hand in the midst of this idleness and plenty, eating too much, drinking too much native beer, smoking too much of the intoxicating dakka, a mischievous kind of help, and making too much love to the Mazitu women, which of course resulted in the usual rows that I had to settle.
Laba! that of their regiment, I suppose, for most of them were men of about the same age, and stabbed and fought and struggled and went down one by one. Back the rest of them were swept; then, led by Mavovo, Stephen and Bausi, charged again, reinforced with the thirty Mazitu.
It was over! Great Heaven! it was over, and we began to count our losses. Four of the Zulus were dead and two others were badly wounded no, three, including Mavovo. They brought him to me leaning on the shoulder of Babemba and another Mazitu captain. He was a shocking sight, for he was shot in three places, and badly cut and battered as well.
More from curiosity than for any other reason I consented and accompanied by Bausi, Babemba and many of the Mazitu, all of us, except Brother John, who remained behind to attend to the wounded, climbed over the debris of the south gate and walked through the black ruins of the huts, across the market-place that was strewn with dead, to what had been our own quarters.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking