I wish I knew the
snakes that I might crush them with my heel. Yonder, beneath us, at
the burying place of kings, there is a hole. In that hole lies the
bones of Chaka, the king who died for Baleka. Far away in Zululand
there is a cleft upon the Ghost Mountain. At the foot of that cleft
lie the bones of Dingaan, the king who died for Nada. It was far to
fall and he was heavy; those bones of his are broken into little
pieces. I went to see them when the vultures and the jackals had done
their work. And then I laughed three times and came here to die.
All that is long ago, and I have not died; though I wish to die and
follow the road that Nada trod. Perhaps I have lived to tell you this
tale, my father, that you may repeat it to the white men if you will.
How old am I? Nay, I do not know. Very, very old. Had Chaka lived he
would have been as old as I.[2] None are living whom I knew when I was
a boy. I am so old that I must hasten. The grass withers, and the
winter comes. Yes, while I speak the winter nips my heart. Well, I am
ready to sleep in the cold, and perhaps I shall awake again in the
spring.
[2] This would have made him nearly a hundred years old, an age rarely
attained by a native. The writer remembers talking to an aged Zulu
woman, however, who told him that she was married when Chaka was
king.
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