"Perhaps, _Baba_, you have been told--my ears are very sharp, and I thought I heard some such words floating through the air just now--that we poor Kaffir _Inyangas_ can prophesy nothing true unless we are paid, and perhaps that is a fact so far as something of the moment is concerned.

And yet the Snake in the _Inyanga_, jumping over the little rock which hides the present from it, may see the path that winds far and far away through the valleys, across the streams, up the mountains, till it is lost in the 'heaven above.' Thus on this feather, burnt in my magic fire, I seem to see something of your future, O my father Macumazana.

Far and far your road runs," and he drew his finger along the feather.

"Here is a journey," and he flicked away a carbonised flake, "here is another, and another, and another," and he flicked off flake after flake.

"Here is one that is very successful, it leaves you rich; and here is yet one more, a wonderful journey this in which you see strange things and meet strange people.
Then"-- and he blew on the feather in such a fashion that all the charred filaments (Brother John says that _laminae_ is the right word for them) fell away from it--"then, there is nothing left save such a pole as some of my people stick upright on a grave, the Shaft of Memory they call it.
O, my father, you will die in a distant land, but you will leave a great memory behind you that will live for hundreds of years, for see how strong is this quill over which the fire has had no power.