The Zulus are very fond of drawing mazes (usogexe) on the ground with the finger, or—after smoking hemp (insangu)—with saliva passed through a hollow stem of tambootie grass and so made to trace a labyrinth (tshuma sogexe) on a smooth floor. The one who draws generally asks some one else to find the way into the royal hut. And this he does with a pointer of tambootie, or failing to follow the right course and getting cornered, is greeted with a general shout of “Wapuka sogexe!” (you are done for in the labyrinth), and has to go back to the start and begin the quest again. This game is a great favourite, and is often played for hours at a time: the sons of Mpande were great adepts at it. They would vary it sometimes by dotting rows of warriors on the outside, and then success depended on the positions that the combatants were made to assume, the great triumph being to bring an army into the shape of a bull’s head and horns, when he whose horn first touched the adversary’s line was acclaimed as winner.
The above is a copy of a Labyrinth made by a Zulu, Ulutyetye, for the well-known missionary, the Rev. R. Robertson, and first reproduced by Messrs. John Sanderson and Co., of Durban. It is noticeable for having two huts to be reached—that in the centre being the Royal one.
The titles of the chapters in the Contents are not necessarily consistent with titles of the chapters in the text, although their order in the text is correct.
An image of the back cover is at the end of this text.
This text has been preserved as in the original, including archaic and inconsistent spelling, punctuation and grammar, except as noted below.
Obvious printer’s errors have been silently corrected.
Footnotes have been renumbered and then moved to the end of the chapter to which they belong.
Page 2: “Ngashiy” and “Ngishiy” each appear once and they were retained as printed.
Page 17: There was one character not printed at “country to [a] river” and is shown here within the bracket.
Page 52: “Uzibebu” was changed to “Usibebu” to correspond to multiple use in the footnote on the same page.