A KAFFIR’S LIFE, CONTINUED -- ADOLESCENCE -- BEAUTY OF FORM IN THE
KAFFIRS, AND REASONS FOR IT -- LIVING STATUES -- BENJAMIN WEST AND
THE APOLLO -- SHOULDERS OF THE KAFFIRS -- SPEED OF FOOT CONSIDERED
HONORABLE -- A KAFFIR MESSENGER AND HIS MODE OF CARRYING A LETTER
-- HIS EQUIPMENT FOR THE JOURNEY -- LIGHT MARCHING-ORDER -- HOW THE
ADDRESS IS GIVEN TO HIM -- CELERITY OF HIS TASK, AND SMALLNESS OF
HIS PAY -- HIS FEET AND THEIR NATURE -- THICKNESS OF THE SOLE, AND
ITS SUPERIORITY OVER THE SHOE -- ANECDOTE OF A SICK BOY AND HIS
PHYSICIAN -- FORM OF THE FOOT -- HEALTHY STATE OF A KAFFIR’S BODY --
ANECDOTE OF WOUNDED GIRL -- RAPIDITY WITH WHICH INJURIES ARE HEALED
-- YOUNG WOMEN, AND THEIR BEAUTY OF FORM -- PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTRAITS
-- DIFFICULTY OF PHOTOGRAPHING A KAFFIR -- THE LOCALITY, GREASE,
NERVOUSNESS -- SHORT TENURE OF BEAUTY -- FEATURES OF KAFFIR GIRLS --
OLD KAFFIR WOMEN AND THEIR LOOKS.
When the youths and maidens are in the full bloom of youth, they afford
as fine specimens of humanity as can be seen anywhere. Their limbs have
never been subject to the distorting influences of clothing, nor their
forms to the absurd compression which was, until recently, destructive
of all real beauty in this and neighboring countries. Each muscle and
sinew has had fair play, the lungs have breathed fresh air, and the
active habits have given to the form that rounded perfection which is
never seen except in those who have enjoyed similar advantages. We
all admire the almost superhuman majesty of the human form as seen in
ancient sculpture, and we need only to travel to Southern Africa to
see similar forms, yet breathing and moving, not motionless images of
marble, but living statues of bronze. This classic beauty of form is
not peculiar to Southern Africa, but is found in many parts of the
world where the inhabitants lead a free, active, and temperate life.
My readers will probably remember the well-known anecdote of West the
painter surprising the critical Italians with his remarks. Bred in a
Quaker family, he had no acquaintance with ancient art; and when he
first visited Rome, he was taken by a large assembly of art-critics
to see the Apollo Belvedere. As soon as the doors were thrown open,
he exclaimed that the statue represented a young Mohawk warrior, much
to the indignation of the critics, who foolishly took his exclamation
as derogatory to the statue, rather than the highest and most genuine
praise. The fact was, that the models from whom the sculptor had
composed his statue, and the young Mohawk warriors so familiar to West,
had received a similar physical education, and had attained a similar
physical beauty. “I have seen them often,” said West, “standing in the
very attitude of this Apollo, and pursuing with an intent eye the arrow
which they had just discharged from the bow.”
There is, indeed, but one fault that the most captious critic can
find with the form of the Kaffir, and that is, a slight deficiency
in the fall of the shoulder. As a race, the Kaffirs are slightly
high-shouldered, though there are many instances where the slope from
the neck to the arm is exactly in accordance with the canons of classic
art.
These young fellows are marvellously swift of foot, speed reckoning
as one of the chief characteristics of a distinguished soldier. They
are also possessed of enormous endurance. You may send a Kaffir for
sixty or seventy miles with a letter, and he will prepare for the start
as quietly as if he had only a journey of some three or four miles
to perform. First, he cuts a stick some three feet in length, splits
the end, and fixes the letter in the cleft, so that he may carry the
missive without damaging it by the grease with which his whole person
is liberally anointed. He then looks to his supply of snuff, and,
should he happen to run short of that needful luxury, it will add wings
to his feet if a little tobacco be presented to him, which he can make
into snuff at his first halt.
[Illustration: (1.) YOUNG KAFFIR ARMED. (See page 20.)]
[Illustration: (2.) KAFFIR POSTMAN. (See page 20.)]
Taking an assagai or two with him, and perhaps a short stick with a
knob at the end, called a “kerry,” he will start off at a slinging
sort of mixture between a run and a trot, and will hold this pace
almost without cessation. As to provision for the journey, he need not
trouble himself about it, for he is sure to fall in with some hut,
or perhaps a village, and is equally sure of obtaining both food and
shelter. He steers his course almost as if by intuition, regardless of
beaten tracks, and arrives at his destination with the same mysterious
certainty that characterizes the migration of the swallow.
It is not so easy to address a letter in Africa as in England, and it
is equally difficult to give directions for finding any particular
house or village. If a chief should be on a visit, and ask his host
to return the call, he simply tells him to go so many days in such a
direction, and then turn for half a day in another direction, and so
on. However, the Kaffir is quite satisfied with such indications, and
is sure to attain his point.
When the messenger has delivered his letter, he will squat down on
the ground, take snuff, or smoke--probably both--and wait patiently
for the answer. As a matter of course, refreshments will be supplied
to him, and, when the answer is handed to him, he will return at the
same pace. Europeans are always surprised when they first see a young
Kaffir undertake the delivery of a letter at so great a distance, and
still more at the wonderfully short time in which he will perform the
journey. Nor are they less surprised when they find that he thinks
himself very well paid with a shilling for his trouble. In point of
fact, the journey is scarcely troublesome at all. He has everything his
own way. There is plenty of snuff in his box, tobacco wherewith to make
more, the prospect of seeing a number of fellow-countrymen on the way,
and enjoying a conversation with them, the dignity of being a messenger
from one white chief to another, and the certainty of obtaining a sum
of money which will enable him to adorn himself with a splendid set of
beads at the next dance.
Barefoot though he be, he seldom complains of any hurt. From constant
usage the soles of his feet are defended by a thickened skin as
insensible as the sole of any boot, and combining equal toughness with
perfect elasticity. He will walk with unconcern over sharp stones
and thorns which would lame a European in the first step, and has
the great advantage of possessing a pair of soles which never wear
out, but actually become stronger by use. Mr. Baines, the African
hunter, narrates a rather ludicrous instance of the insensibility of
the Kaffir’s foot. Passing by some Kaffir houses, he heard doleful
outcries, and found that a young boy was undergoing a medical or
surgical operation, whichever may be the proper name. The boy was
suffering from some ailment for which the medicine-man prescribed a
thorough kneading with a hot substance. The plan by which the process
was carried out was simple and ingenious. A Kaffir man held his own
foot over the fire until the sole became quite hot. The boy was
then held firmly on the ground, while the man trampled on him with
the heated foot, and kneaded him well with this curious implement
of medicine. When that foot was cold, he heated the other, and so
proceeded till the operation was concluded. The heat of his sole was so
great that the poor boy could scarcely endure the pain, and struggled
hard to get free, but the operator felt no inconvenience whatever from
subjecting his foot to such an ordeal. The dreaded “stick” of the
Orientals would lose its terrors to a Kaffir, who would endure the
bastinado with comparative impunity.
Among these people, the foot assumes its proper form and dimensions.
The toes are not pinched together by shoes or boots, and reduced to
the helpless state too common in this country. The foot is, like that
of an ancient statue, wide and full across the toes, each of which has
its separate function just as have the fingers of the hand, and each
of which is equally capable of performing that function. Therefore the
gait of a Kaffir is perfection itself. He has not had his foot lifted
behind and depressed in front by high-heeled boots, nor the play of the
instep checked by leathern bonds. The wonderful arch of the foot--one
of the most astonishing pieces of mechanism that the world affords--can
perform its office unrestrained, and every little bone, muscle and
tendon plays its own part, and none other.
The constant activity of the Kaffirs, conjoined to their temperate
mode of life, keeps them in perfect health, and guards them against
many evils which befall the civilized man. They are free from many of
the minor ailments incident to high civilization, and which, trifling
as they may be singly, detract greatly in the aggregate from the
happiness of life. Moreover, their state of health enables them to
survive injuries which would be almost instantly fatal to any ordinary
civilized European. That this comparative immunity is owing to the
mode of life and not to the color of the skin is a well-known fact,
Europeans being, when in thorough good health, even more enduring
than their dark-skinned companions. A remarkable instance of this
fact occurred during the bloody struggle between the Dutch colonists
and Dingan’s forces in 1837. The Kaffirs treacherously assaulted the
unsuspecting Dutchmen, and then invaded their villages, spearing all
the inhabitants and destroying the habitations. Near the Blue Krantz
River was a heap of dead, among whom were found two young girls, who
still showed signs of life. One had received nineteen stabs with the
assagai, and the other twenty-one. They were removed from the corpses,
and survived their dreadful wounds, reaching womanhood, though both
crippled for life.
On one occasion, while I was conversing with Captain Burton, and
alluding to the numerous wounds which he had received, and the little
effect which they had upon him, he said that when the human frame was
brought, by constant exercise and simple diet, into a state of perfect
health, mere flesh wounds were scarcely noticed, the cut closing
almost as easily as if it had been made in India-rubber. It may also
be familiar to my readers, that when in this country men are carefully
trained for any physical exertion, whether it be pedestrianism,
gymnastics, rowing, or the prize-ring, they receive with indifference
injuries which would have prostrated them a few months previously, and
recover from them with wonderful rapidity.
The young Kaffir women are quite as remarkable for the beauty of their
form as are the men, and the very trifling dress which they wear serves
to show off their figures to the best advantage. Some of the young
Kaffir girls are, in point of form, so perfect that they would have
satisfied even the fastidious taste of the classical sculptor. There
is, however, in them the same tendency to high shoulders which has
already been mentioned, and in some cases the shoulders are set almost
squarely across the body. In most instances, however, the shoulders
have the proper droop, while the whole of the bust is an absolute model
of perfection--rounded, firm, and yet lithe as the body of a panther.
There is now before me a large collection of photographs, representing
Kaffir girls of various ages, and, in spite of the invariable stiffness
of photographic portraits, they exhibit forms which might serve as
models for any sculptor. If they could only have been photographed
while engaged in their ordinary pursuits, the result would have been
most artistic, but the very knowledge that they were not to move hand
or foot has occasioned them to assume attitudes quite at variance with
the graceful unconsciousness of their ordinary gestures.
Besides the stiffness which has already been mentioned, there are
several points which make a really good photographic portrait almost
an impossibility. In the first place, the sunlight is so brilliant
that the shadows become developed into black patches, and the high
lights into splashes of white without the least secondary shading. The
photographer of Kaffir life cannot put his models into a glass room
cunningly furnished with curtains and tinted glass. He must take the
camera into the villages, photograph the inhabitants as they stand or
sit in the open air, and make a darkened hut act as a developing-tent.
Taking the portrait properly is a matter of extreme difficulty. The
Kaffirs _will_ rub themselves with grease, and the more they shine the
better they are dressed. Now, as every photographer knows, nothing is
more perplexing than a rounded and polished surface in the full rays
of the sunbeams; and if it were only possible to rub the grease from
the dark bodies, and deprive them of their gloss, the photographer
would have a better chance of success. But the Kaffir ladies, old and
young alike, think it a point of honor to be dressed in their very
best when their portraits are taken, and will insist upon bedizening
themselves exactly in the way which is most destructive to photography.
They take fresh grease, and rub their bodies until they shine like a
well-polished boot; they indue every necklace, girdle, bracelet, or
other ornament that they can muster, and not until they are satisfied
with their personal appearance will they present themselves to the
artist. Even when they have done so, they are restless, inquisitive,
and rather nervous, and in all probability will move their heads
just as the cap of the lens is removed, or will take fright and
run away altogether. In the case of the two girls represented in
the illustration, on page 25, the photographer has been singularly
fortunate. Both the girls belonged to the tribe commanded by the
well-known chief Goza, whose portrait will be given on a subsequent
page. The girls are clad in their ordinary costume of every-day life,
and in fact, when their portraits were taken, were acting as housemaids
in the house of an European settler.
Unfortunately, this singular beauty of form is very transient; and when
a girl has attained to the age at which an English girl is in her full
perfection, the Kaffir girl has begun to age, and her firm, lithe,
and graceful form has become flabby and shapeless. In the series of
portraits which has been mentioned, this gradual deterioration of form
is curiously evident; and in one example, which represents a row of
girls sitting under the shade of a hut, young girls just twenty years
of age look like women of forty.
[Illustration: (1.) UNMARRIED KAFFIR GIRLS. (See page 21.)]
[Illustration: (2.) OLD KAFFIR WOMEN. (See page 27.)]
The chief drawback to a Kaffir girl’s beauty lies in her face, which
is never a beautiful one, according to European ideas on this subject.
It is mostly a pleasant, good-humored face, but the cheek-bones are
too high, the nose too wide, and the lips very much too large. The
two which have been already represented are by far the most favorable
specimens of the collection, and no one can say that their faces are in
any way equal to their forms. It may be that their short, crisp, harsh,
woolly hair, so different from the silken tresses of European women,
produces some feeling of dislike; but, even if they were furnished with
the finest and most massive head of hair, they could never be called
handsome. People certainly do get used to their peculiar style, and
sometimes prefer the wild beauty of a Kaffir girl to the more refined,
though more insipid, style of the European. Still, few Englishmen would
think themselves flattered if their faces were thought to resemble the
features of a Kaffir of the same age, and the same rule will apply to
the women as well as to the men.
Unfortunately, the rapidity with which the Kaffir women deteriorate
renders them very unsightly objects at an age in which an European
woman is in her prime. Among civilized nations, age often carries with
it a charming mixture of majesty and simplicity, which equally command
our reverence and our love. Among this people, however, we find nothing
in their old age to compensate for the lost beauty of youth. They do
not possess that indefinable charm which is so characteristic of the
old age of civilized woman, nor is there any vestige of that spiritual
beauty which seems to underlie the outward form, and to be even more
youthful than youth itself. Perhaps one reason for this distinction may
be the uncultivated state of the mind; but, whatever may be the cause,
in youth the Kaffir woman is a sylph, in old age a hag.