"'Know it! why, what is "Suliman" but a corruption of Solomon?[*]
Besides, an old Isanusi or witch doctoress up in the Manica country
told me all about it. She said that the people who lived across those
mountains were a "branch" of the Zulus, speaking a dialect of Zulu,
but finer and bigger men even; that there lived among them great
wizards, who had learnt their art from white men when "all the world
was dark," and who had the secret of a wonderful mine of "bright
stones."'

[*] Suliman is the Arabic form of Solomon.--Editor.

"Well, I laughed at this story at the time, though it interested me,
for the Diamond Fields were not discovered then, but poor Evans went
off and was killed, and for twenty years I never thought any more of
the matter. However, just twenty years afterwards--and that is a long
time, gentlemen; an elephant hunter does not often live for twenty
years at his business--I heard something more definite about Suliman's
Mountains and the country which lies beyond them. I was up beyond the
Manica country, at a place called Sitanda's Kraal, and a miserable
place it was, for a man could get nothing to eat, and there was but
little game about. I had an attack of fever, and was in a bad way
generally, when one day a Portugee arrived with a single companion--a
half-breed. Now I know your low-class Delagoa Portugee well. There is
no greater devil unhung in a general way, battening as he does upon
human agony and flesh in the shape of slaves. But this was quite a
different type of man to the mean fellows whom I had been accustomed
to meet; indeed, in appearance he reminded me more of the polite doms
I have read about, for he was tall and thin, with large dark eyes and
curling grey mustachios. We talked together for a while, for he could