(1) (1) This beautiful wood is known in Natal as "red ivory."-- ED.
On the last night before the forming of the Ingomboco, the witch-doctors, male and female, entered the kraal.

There were a hundred and a half of them, and they were made hideous and terrible with the white bones of men, with bladders of fish and of oxen, with fat of wizards, and with skins of snakes.

They walked in silence till they came in front of the Intunkulu, the royal house; then they stopped and sang this song for the king to hear:-- We have come, O king, we have come from the caves and the rocks and the swamps, To wash in the blood of the slain; We have gathered our host from the air as vultures are gathered in war.
When they scent the blood of the slain.
We come not alone, O king: with each Wise One there passes a ghost, Who hisses the name of the doomed.
We come not alone, for we are the sons and Indunas of Death, And he guides our feet to the doomed.
Red rises the moon o'er the plain, red sinks the sun in the west, Look, wizards, and bid them farewell! We count you by hundreds, you who cried for a curse on the king.
Ha! soon shall we bid YOU farewell! Then they were silent, and went in silence to the place appointed for them, there to pass the night in mutterings and magic.

But those who were gathered together shivered with fear when they heard their words, for they knew well that many a man would be switched with the gnu's tail before the sun sank once more.

And I, too, trembled, for my heart was full of fear.