For twenty years, I believe I am right in saying, you, as Assistant Secretary for Native Affairs in Natal, and in other offices, have been intimately acquainted with the Zulu people. Moreover, you are one of the few living men who have made a deep and scientific study of their language, their customs and their history. So I confess that I was the more pleased after you were so good as to read this tale &£150; the second book of the epic of the vengeance of Zikali, the Thing-that-should-never-have-been-born, and of the fall of the House of Senzangakona* &£150; when you wrote to me that it was animated by the true Zulu spirit.