The writer of this romance has been encouraged to his task by a purpose somewhat beyond that of setting out a wild tale of savage life.

When he was yet a lad,--now some seventeen years ago,--fortune took him to South Africa.

There he was thrown in with men who, for thirty or forty years, had been intimately acquainted with the Zulu people, with their history, their heroes, and their customs.

From these he heard many tales and traditions, some of which, perhaps, are rarely told nowadays, and in time to come may cease to be told altogether.

Then the Zulus were still a nation; now that nation has been destroyed, and the chief aim of its white rulers is to root out the warlike spirit for which it was remarkable, and to replace it by a spirit of peaceful progress.