Was that any reason for their sparing, as they did, some hundred miles of unprotected river border for the whole six weeks during which the invaders helplessly awaited reinforcements? And, if their object was to invade Natal, why did the Zulus spare the defenceless homesteads of white and black, and make straight for the one point close to their own border, where was a portion of the invading army? As one of our officials wrote at the time, it would have been “not easy for regular forces to intercept a body of thousands of naked savages, travelling by byways, forty miles in a night, living on plunder, overwhelming by numbers any post they surprise, and then dispersing as they came by bypaths to their own country not sixty miles off.”*

No doubt, if they had chosen, the Zulus might so have swept Natal. But just a week after the battle of Isandhlwana, two native waggon-drivers, fugitives from the English camp, told my father, in my hearing, how as they fled for their lives upon that dreadful day, and could scarce stumble up the rocky bank of the stream into Natal, the Zulus after them in hot pursuit — they had heard a Zulu leader shout to his men, “Come back! the king has not said you are to cross! He is not invading. He is only defending the land of the Zulus!”

“And they went back, and so our lives were saved,” said the fugitives.