Day by day he told some of it till it was finished.

It is not all written in these pages, for portions may have been forgotten, or put aside as irrelevant.

Neither has it been possible for the writer of it to render the full force of the Zulu idiom nor to convey a picture of the teller.

For, in truth, he acted rather than told his story.

Was the death of a warrior in question, he stabbed with his stick, showing how the blow fell and where; did the story grow sorrowful, he groaned, or even wept.