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THE BIRTH OF UMSLOPOGAAS.
This was the rule of the life of Chaka, that he would have no children, though he had many wives.

Every child born to him by his "sisters" was put away at once.
"What, Mopo," he said to me, "shall I rear up children to put me to the assegai when they grow great?
They call me tyrant.

Say, how do those chiefs die whom men name tyrants?
They die at the hands of those whom they have bred.

Nay, Mopo, I will rule for my life, and when I join the spirits of my fathers let the strongest take my power and my place!" Now it chanced that shortly after Chaka had spoken thus, my sister Baleka, the king's wife, fell in labour; and on that same day my wife Macropha was brought to bed of twins, and this but eight days after my second wife, Anadi, had given birth to a son.