Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 17, 1906.djvu/513

Rh eager for a personal decoration, daring in the old days to kill and wear an imamba.

On the 26th August, under the guidance of Mr. H. C. Lugg, of the Native Affairs Office, a party of anthropologists visited the Chief Laduma's kraal. It is in the native location of Swartkop. From Swartkop station, a short distance outside Maritzburg, we walked up the hill. When we got to the top we found ourselves overlooking an amphitheatre of hills, with Laduma's kraal on the hill-side a few yards below us, and on the hills beyond were two other kraals. The kraals, as we saw in passing through the country, and as we were also told, are usually placed near, but not on, the tops of hills. Laduma's kraal, like all other kraals here, had the cattle-enclosure (which is properly the kraal) in the centre, and the huts stood round it. In this case, however, the huts were few in number, and they did not extend beyond the upper half-circle, leaving the lower open. Formerly the circle of huts would have been enclosed with a stout palisade or fence of mimosa against surprises, but since the British pacification the use of the fence has been discontinued as unnecessary. Formerly, too, the kraals consisted of a much larger collection of huts, the chief gathering his tribesmen together for the sake of defence. Now the tribesmen swarm off more readily to other spots under the immediate rule of lesser chiefs; consequently the kraals are reduced in size. Laduma's cattle-kraal was surrounded by a dry wall of rough stones, the lower side of which was partly broken down. The entrance was on the upper side near the chief's hut. Just outside it, on the right, a fire was built, and there were pots and preparations for cooking. The chief was in fact that day entertaining members of his tribe from a distance on two oxen given to him the day before by the Governor.