I believe it is the Chinese who declare that particular localities have good or evil influences attached to them, some kind of spirit of their own, and really Hloma Amabutu and a few other spots that I am acquainted with in Africa give colour to the fancy.  Certainly as I set foot upon that accursed ground, that Golgotha, that Place of Skulls, a shiver went through me.  It may have been caused by the atmosphere, moral and actual, of the mount, or it may have been a prescience of a certain dreadful scene which within a few months I was doomed to witness there.  Or perhaps the place itself and the knowledge of the trial before me sent a sudden chill through my healthy blood.  I cannot say which it was, but the fact remains as I have stated, although a minute or two later, when I saw what kind of sleepers lay upon that mount, it would not have been necessary for me to seek any far-fetched explanation of my fear.

Across this hill, winding in and out between the rough rocks that lay here, there and everywhere like hailstones after a winter storm, ran sundry paths.  It seems that the shortest road to various places in the neighbourhood of the Great Kraal ran over it, and although no Zulu ever dared to set foot there between sun-set and rise, in the daytime they used these paths freely enough.  But I suppose that they also held that this evil-omened field of death had some spirit of its own, some invisible but imminent fiend, who needed to be propitiated, lest soon he should claim them also.

This was their method of propitiation, a common one enough, I believe, in many lands, though what may be its meaning I cannot tell.  As the traveller came to those spots where the paths cut across each other, he took a stone and threw it on to a heap that had been accumulated there by the hands of other travellers.  There were many such heaps upon the hill, over a dozen, I think, and the size of them was great.  I should say that the biggest contained quite fifty loads of stones, and the smallest not fewer than twenty or thirty.

Now, Hans, although he had never set foot there before, seemed to have learned all the traditions of the place, and what rites were necessary to avert its curse.  At any rate, when we came to the first heap, he cast a stone upon it, and begged me to do the same.  I laughed and refused, but when we reached the second heap the same thing happened.  Again I refused, whereon, before we came to a third and larger pile, Hans sat down upon the ground and began to groan, swearing that he would not go one step farther unless I promised to make the accustomed offering.

“Why not, you fool?” I asked.

“Because if you neglect it, baas, I think that we shall stop here for ever.  Oh! you may laugh, but I tell you that already you have brought ill-luck upon yourself.  Remember my words, baas, when you miss two of the five aasvogels.”

“Bosh!” I exclaimed, or, rather, its Dutch equivalent.  Still, as this talk of missing vultures touched me nearly, and it is always as well to conform to native prejudices, at the next and two subsequent heaps I cast my stone as humbly as the most superstitious Zulu in the land.