rocks, chattering and screaming like a careful of
monkeys at the Zoo. Sir John Willoughby and one
or two men from Fort Victoria chanced to come over
that day to visit us, and on hearing of our adventure
he summoned Ikomo to a palaver, and told him that
if such a thing happened again his kraal would be
burnt to the ground and his tribe driven from the
hill; and the result of this threat was that Ikomo
troubled us no more.
Ikomo s kraal occupies a lovely situation on
Zimbabwe Hill, with huts nestling in cosy corners
amongst the rocks, from the top of which lovely
views can be obtained over the distant Bessa and
Inyum ranges on the one side, and over the Livouri
range, and Providential Pass on the other, whilst
to the south the view extends over a sea of
rugged kopjes down into the Tokwe valley. From
this point the strategical value of the hill is at once
grasped, rising as it does sheer out of a well-watered
plain, unassailable from all sides, the most command-
mg position in all the country round. The village is
festooned with charming creepers, bignonia and
others, then in full flower; rows of granaries decorate
the summit, and in the midst are some of those
quaint trees which they use as larders, hanging therefrom
the produce of their fields neatly tied up in
long grass packages, which look like colossal German
sausages growing from the branches.
On one of the few flat spaces in the village is
kept the village drum, or £ tom-tom,’ constantly in
use for dances. One day we found the women of the
village hard at work enjoying themselves round this
drum, dancing a sort of war dance of their own. It
was a queer sight to see these women, with deep
furrows on their naked stomachs, rushing to and fro,
stooping, kneeling, shouting, brandishing battle axes
and assegais, and going through all the pantomime
of war, until at last one of these Amazons fell into
hysterics, and the dance was over. On another occasion,
whilst visiting some ruins in a lovely dale about
eight miles from Zimbabwe, we were treated to another
sort of dance by the women of a neighbouring
village. The chief feature in the performance was a
grotesque one, and consisted of smacking their furrowed
stomachs and long hanging breasts in measured
cadence with the movements of their feet, so that the
air resounded with the noise produced.
As for the men, they are for ever dancing, either
a beer drink, the new moon, or simple, unfeigned
joviality being the motive power. Frequently on cold
evenings our men would dance round the camp fire;
always the same indomba, or war dance ; round and
round they went, shouting, capering, gesticulating.
Now and again scouts would be sent out to reconnoitre,
and would engage in fight with an imaginary
foe, and return victorious to the circle. If one had not
had personal experience of their cowardice, one might
almost have been alarmed at their hostile attitudes. On
pay-day, when our thirty workmen each received a
blanket for their month’s work, they treated us to a
dance, each man wrapped in his new acquisition.
Umgabe, with his sceptre and battle axe, conducted