“According to custom, I sent my son to work for old Isaac Meyer, as

I lived on his place. When the war began all the Meyer family moved

further into the Transvaal, my son going with them as herd. I went up

to Klip River with them as driver, where the river forms the boundary

between the Free State and Transvaal. I returned at once, leaving my son

with the Meyers. He was a small boy about twelve years of age. At the

termination of the war the Meyers sent for me to drive them down. I met

them a day’s journey this side of Klip River. I asked them where my son

was. Old Isaac Meyer told me he had sent him to look for horses; he did

not return; and another boy was sent who brought the horses. The horses

were found close by. No one went to look for my son. I asked old Isaac

Meyer for leave to go and offer a reward amongst the Kafirs for my son.

He refused, saying I must drive him home, and then he would give me a

pass to come back and look for him. On our arrival at the farm I and my

wife again applied to old Isaac Meyer to be allowed to go and see about

my son. He refused, saying I must first shear the sheep. I replied that

he well knew that I could not shear sheep. I said, ‘How can I work when

my heart is sore for my son?’ Meyer said again that I must wait awhile

as the rivers were full. I said how could that matter, seeing that both

in coming and going with the waggons we crossed no rivers? As he refused

me a pass, I started without one to seek my son. On arrival at Mavovo’s

kraal I met my brother, who told me that I must go no further, or the

Boers would shoot me. Having no pass I returned. On my return my wives

told me that the Meyers had come every morning to look for me with

guns to shoot me, telling them that ‘it was now no longer the days for

sjamboking (flogging with hide whips) the natives, but the days for

shooting them.’ On hearing this I collected my goods, and by morning

had everything on the Natal side of the Buffalo River--on Natal ground.

About mid-day Martinus Meyer overtook us by Degaza’s kraal and asked

me what I was doing on the Natal side of the river. I told him I was

leaving for Natal, because I found it altogether too hot for me in

the Transvaal. He said that if I came back he would make everything

comfortable. I refused. He then attacked me with a knobkerrie, and would

have killed me had not one of my wives, seeing that I was badly hurt,

knocked him down with a piece of iron. Martinus then mounted his

horse and galloped off. I then got on my horse and fled. My wives

hid themselves. In the afternoon there came to the waggon Jan Meyer,

Martinus Meyer, young Isaac Meyer, and the man called Cornelius. They

hunted all about for us with the object of shooting us, as they told

Degaza’s Kafirs. My wives then saw them inspan the waggon and take

everything away. I had a waggon, twelve oxen, four cows, and a mare,

also a box containing two hundred pounds in gold, a telescope, clothes,

and other things. My wives found the box broken on the ground and all

the contents gone. Forty sacks of grain belonging to me were also taken.

I was robbed of everything I had, with the exception of the horse I

escaped on. The waggon was one I hired from my brother (a relation); the

oxen were my own brother’s. Eighty pounds of the money I got from the

Standard Bank in Newcastle for oxen sold to the owner of the store on

the Ingagane Drift. The rest I had accumulated in fees from doctoring. I

am a doctor amongst my own people. I come now to ask you to allow me to

settle on your land as a refugee.

“(Signed) Indabezimbi, his X mark.

“This statement was made by Indabezimbi at Hilldrop, Newcastle, Natal,

on the Seventeenth of August, Eighteen hundred and eighty-one, in the

presence of the undersigned witnesses.

“(Signed) H. Rider Haggard.

A. H. D. Cochrane.

J. H. Gay Roberts.

“N.B.--The outrage of which Indabezimbi has here given an account

occurred within a week of the present date, August 17th, 1881.”

Statement of the woman Nongena, Wife of Indabezimbi

“My master’s name is Isaac Meyer; he lives in the Transvaal, south of

Utrecht. We have lived on the farm about a year. On the farm lived also

Jan Meyer, Martinus Meyer, and young Isaac Meyer, sons of old Isaac

Meyer. There was also another man on the farm, whose name I do not know.

When the waggon went up with the Meyers’ family to the centre of the

Transvaal, when the late war broke out, my husband drove old Isaac

Meyer’s waggon, and my son Ungazaan also went to drive on stock. After

my husband had driven the waggon to its destination in the Transvaal he

returned to the kraal, leaving his son Ungazaan with the Meyers. After

the war was over my husband was sent for by the Meyers to drive back

the waggons. On arrival of the Meyers at the farm I found my husband

had returned, but my son was left behind. I asked my master where my son

was; my master replied, ‘He did not know, he had sent to boy to bring up

horses, but he had not brought them.’ Another boy was sent who brought

the horses. He said he had not seen the boy Ungazaan since he left to

look for the horses, as they had left the place the morning after the

boy was missing. My husband asked for a pass to go back and look for

the boy; Meyer refused, and my husband went without one to look for

Ungazaan, my son. He returned without the boy, owing, he said, to the

want of a pass. My husband dared not go into the country without a pass.

During my husband’s absence, the three sons of old Isaac Meyer, namely,

Martinus, Jan, and Isaac, came every morning to search for my husband,

saying, ‘We will kill him, he leaves our work to go without our leave

for look for the boy.’ They came once with sjamboks, but afterwards with

guns, saying they would kill him if they found him. On hearing this my

husband said, ‘We cannot then stay here longer.’ He then went at once

and borrowed a waggon and twelve oxen, and during the night we packed

the waggon three times, and took three loads across the Buffalo River

to Degaza’s kraal, which is on Natal ground, forty sacks of grain, 200

pounds in a box, with clothes and other things, also mats and skins, and

four head of cattle and a horse. All these things were at Degaza’s kraal

before sunrise the next morning. The Induna Kabane, at the magistrate’s

office at Newcastle, knows of the money, and from whence it came. All

the money is our money.

“About mid-day on the day after the night we moved, Martinus came on

horseback to us at Degaza’s kraal, and I saw him beating my husband with

a kerrie; he hit him also in the mouth with his fist. He hit my husband

on the head with a kerrie; he beat my husband on the foot when he was

trying to creep away in a hut, and would have killed him had not one of

his wives named Camgagaan hit Martinus on the head with a piece of iron.

Martinus, on recovery, rode away; my husband also fled on a horse.

“I with the other wives fled, and hid ourselves close by in the grass

and stones. Presently we saw from our own hiding-place three white men,

armed with guns, seeking for us. Their names were Martinus Meyer, Jan

Meyer, and Isaac Meyer, all three sons of old Isaac Meyer. They sought

us in vain. From our hiding-place we heard the waggon driven away; and

later, when we went back to Degaza’s kraal, they told us that the Meyers

had inspanned the waggon, and had returned with it to the Transvaal side

of the Buffalo River. The names of those who saw the Boers go away with

the waggon are Gangtovo, Capaches, Nomatonga, Nomamane, and others.

The Boers took away on the waggon that night all the last load we had

brought over from the Transvaal, together with all our clothes; and

some of the sacks first brought over were loaded up, all our cattle were

taken, and our box was broken, and the 200 pounds taken away. We found

the pieces of the box on the ground when we came from our hiding-place.

We then fled. The people at Degaza’s kraal told us that the Boers had

said that they would return, and take away that which they were forced

to leave behind when they took the first load. We have since heard from

Degaza that the Boers came back again and took what remained of our

property at Degaza’s kraal. Degaza saw the Boers take the things

himself.

“This is all I know of the facts. The assaults and robbery took place,

as near as I can say, about fourteen days ago.”

(Signed) Nongena, her X mark.

Gagaoola, also wife of Indabezimbi, states:--“I have heard all that

Nongena has told you. Her words are true; I was present when the assault

and robbery took place.”

(Signed) Gagaoola, her X mark.

These statements were made to us at Hilldrop, Newcastle, Natal, on the

Twenty-second of August, Eighteen hundred and eighty-one.

A. H. D. Cochrane.

H. Rider Haggard.

(Signed) Ayah, her X mark,

Interpreter.

Indabezimbi

“Mr. Alderman Fowler asked the Under Secretary of State for the

Colonies, whether the British Resident at Pretoria had brought under

the notice of the Transvaal Government the circumstances of an outrage

committed in August last, by a party of Boers, on the person and

property of a Kafir named Indabezimbi, who was at that time residing in

Natal; and whether any steps had been taken by the authorities of the

Transvaal either to institute a judicial inquiry into the matter, or to

surrender the offenders to the Government of Natal.

“Mr. Courtney.--On the 13th of October the British Resident reported

that, according to promise, the Government has caused an investigation

to be made at Utrecht, and informed him that the result was somewhat

to invalidate the statement of Indabezimbi; but that the documents

connected with the investigation at Utrecht would speedily be forwarded

to him with a view to correspondence through him with the Natal

Government. No further communication has been received. It must be

observed that, in the absence of any extradition convention, a judicial

inquiry in this case is practically impossible, the outrage, whatever

it was, having been committed in Natal, and the offenders being in

the Transvaal. Her Majesty’s Government are taking active steps to

re-establish a system of extradition, in pursuance of Article 29, of the

Convention. The despatches on this subject will be given to Parliament

when the correspondence is completed.”

IV

A BOER ADVERTISEMENT

It may be interesting to Englishmen to know what treatment is meted out

to such of their fellow-countrymen as have been bold enough, or forced

by necessity, to remain in the Transvaal since the retrocession. The

following is a translation of an advertisement recently published in the

“Volkstem,” a Transvaal paper, and is a fair sample of what “loyalists”

have to expect.

“WARNING

“We, the undersigned Burghers of the Ward Aapies river, hereby warn all

loyal persons who have registered themselves with the British Resident,

that they are not to come into our houses, or into our farms, and still

less to offer to shake hands. They can greet us at a distance on the

road _like Kafirs_, and those who act contrary to this notice can expect

the result.”

Presumably “the result” that the Englishman who takes the liberty

to offer to shake hands with a Boer can expect, is to be beaten or

murdered. This notice is signed by the Justice of the Peace or “Veld

Cornet” of the district. Anybody who knows the estimation in which a

Kafir is held by the Boers will understand its peculiar insolence.

V

“TRANSVAAL’S” LETTER TO THE “STANDARD”

The following letter appeared in the issue of the “Standard” of the 31st

May 1882, and is dated Pretoria, 27th April. It is signed “Transvaal,”

probably because the author, were he to put his name at the foot of so

candid a document, would find himself in much the same position as that

occupied at the present moment by an Irish landlord who has outraged the

susceptibilities of the Land League. He would be rigorously “boycotted,”

and might, in the event of any disturbance, be made into a target. The

Transvaal Boers are very sensitive to criticism, especially where their

native policy is concerned. I take the liberty to reprint the letter

here, partly because I feel sure that I will be forwarding the wishes

of the writer by assisting to give publicity to his facts, and partly

on account of the striking and recent confirmation it affords, on every

point, to my remarks on the same subject:--

“Sir,--In calling your attention to what is going on on the

south-western border of the Transvaal, I may possibly tell you of some

things which you may already have heard of, for in the present isolated

condition of the country, without telegraphs, and with a very imperfect

postal system, added to the jealousy of the Boer Government in keeping

their actions secret from the outside world, it is not only very

difficult to get at the truth of what is happening, but the people in

one portion of the country are in many cases totally ignorant of what is

going on in another. Nevertheless, I feel it incumbent on me to call

the attention of the English people, through your widely circulating

journal, to what has come under my observation with reference to the

disgraceful native war which is, and has been, raging on the south-west

border of this country.

“During the late Boer war, you may be aware of the fact that a very

large number, if not all, of the natives, were strongly in favour of

the English Government, and only awaited the signal from it to rush upon

their old oppressors. But the natives, although forbidden by the English

Government from joining with them against the Boers (it is hardly

necessary to say that had it not been for this the war would have had a

very different ending), nevertheless afforded an asylum and protection

to the lives and property of refugee Englishmen and loyalists. Notable

among these natives was a Chief named Montsiou, whose tribe is situated

just outside the borders of the Transvaal to the south-west. This

Chief and his people received numbers of refugees who fled to them for

protection from the rapacity of the Boers, and watched over them and

their property throughout the war. For this offence the Boers swore to

be revenged on him, and hardly was the war finished when they commenced

commandeering in the Potchefstroom district, under the pretence of

protecting their borders, but with the ostensible purpose of inflicting

chastisement on this loyal Chief; and, the better to effect their

purpose, they allied themselves with a neighbouring Chief, who had some

old grudge against him, and, by promises of assistance and hopes of

plunder, induced him to commence a war, under cover of which they could

join, and thus effect the purpose they had in view.

“The Chiefs whom the Boers had instigated to harass Montsiou got

the worst of it, and the action of the Boers, who were actively

commandeering in the Potchefstroom (district?), under Commandant Cronge,

was brought to the notice of the Royal Commission through complaints

made by loyal Boers, and resulted in an inquiry into the subject, which

showed that his opponent was the aggressor, and was acting under the

advice of and assistance from the Boers. The Royal Commission managed to

patch matters up, but no sooner were their labours over, and the country

fairly handed over to the Boers, than Moshete and Masouw, instigated by

the Boers, commenced again harassing Montsiou, with the avowed purpose

of bringing on a war, and so far succeeded as to oblige Montsiou to take

up arms in self-defence.

“From that time forward the war has gone on increasing in dimensions,

until other Chiefs have been drawn into it, and the Boer volunteers

fighting against Montsiou and Monkoroane are almost equal in numbers to

the natives. The Boers, while doing all they can to crush Montsiou on

account of the protection he afforded loyalists during the late war

against the English Government, are careful not to do it in an official

way, because that might cause trouble with England, whereas, by

aiding and assisting it privately, they could do quite as much without

incurring responsibility. You may naturally ask how I know all this, and

what proofs I can advance in support of it. Some time after the Royal

Commission had left the country, and the war had commenced again, Piet

Joubert, who is Commandant-General, went down to the border with the

object of putting an end to the war. This, I presume, he did for the

sake of appearances, for it is well known that he entertains a strong

hatred against those natives who in any way showed a partiality for

British rule; and when it is remembered that Piet Joubert’s journey did

not result in a cessation of hostilities, but in an increase, and that

ever since his journey the war has increased in area and in numbers,

and that in no single instance has a Boer volunteer been prevented

from crossing the border, or ammunition for use against Montsiou been

stopped, the sincerity of his intentions may well be doubted.

“Then, again, officers in the Boer Jagers went about Pretoria

endeavouring to obtain volunteers to fight against Montsiou, saying

that they were to have some months’ leave from the Government, and that

subscriptions would be raised to assist those men who had no private

means. This took place almost immediately after Piet Joubert’s return

from the border, and while he was in Pretoria, and the general opinion

was that he was at the bottom of it; but as it became rather more public

than was intended, the British Resident was obliged to take notice of

it, and the result was that the Boers, though in general treating the

British Resident with little consideration, thought it wisest to carry

on their operations in a more private manner, more especially as their

object could be attained quite as effectually in this way.

“While the Boers are assisting Moshete and Masouw by every means in

their power, with the sole object of crushing Montsiou and Monkoroane,

another loyal Chief, the Colonial Government, no doubt under

instructions from home, are doing their best to prevent volunteers or

ammunition reaching them, and have already rested men in Kimberley, who

have been trying to raise volunteers to go to their assistance.

“The result of this is, that the loyal Chiefs are suffering under

a double disadvantage; for while their enemies are receiving every

assistance, they are blockaded on all sides, and, through the action

of the English Government in preventing them obtaining assistance, are

rapidly falling a prey to the Boers. Those only who know anything of the

Boer method of warfare against natives will know what this means; and in

spite of the Boer Government doing all they can to keep things

secret, horrible tales of the cruelties perpetrated by them leak out

occasionally.

“It seems to me a disgraceful thing, and a stain on the honour of

England, that these loyal Chiefs and their tribes should be robbed,

plundered, and shot down like dogs, simply because they afforded

protection to the lives and property of Englishmen during the late

war, and yet these things are going on and are being perpetrated on the

border of England’s Colonies. If England will not step in and insist on

the Boers putting a stop to this murderous war, then in God’s name

let her not prevent these poor natives from obtaining ammunition and

assistance to enable them to defend their country. They succoured our

countrymen, and if we cannot succour them, the least we can do is not to

interfere to prevent them from protecting themselves!

“Of course, it suits the Boer Government to make out that they have

nothing to do with the war, and cannot prevent Boer Volunteers from

fighting these Chiefs; and so long as the English Government rests

satisfied with these answers, so long will this disgraceful state of

things go on. Let the English Government be firm, however, and insist

on the Boers taking no part in this war, and it will cease--a sure proof

that the Boer Government have the power to stop it if they have the

will.

“Not only are the Boers wreaking vengeance upon Montsiou and Monkoroane,

but a friend of theirs, a Chief of the name of Kalafin, whose tribe is

situated in the Zeerust district, Transvaal, has been robbed by them of

everything he possessed. This Chief had English sympathies; and as he

presumed to build a wall round his town he gave the Boers the excuse

they wanted. He was ordered to take the wall down, which he did, at the

same time proving that he only built it to prevent his cattle straying

among the huts. He was then ordered to come to Pretoria, which he did

accordingly. He was then ordered to pay a fine of three thousand cattle,

which fine he paid. No sooner was this done than the Boers, bent on

his ruin, raised the fine to ten thousand head. The poor Chief in vain

pleaded his inability to pay. It was the old story of the wolf and the

lamb. Because he couldn’t pay, the Boers construed it into an act of

disobedience, and at once ordered their men to go in and take everything

he possessed. This tribe is small and weak, which the Boers well knew.

Eye-witnesses of what followed say it was a heartrending sight. The

women, with children in their arms, pleaded in vain to the Boers to

leave them something or they would starve, but the latter only jeered

at them. What these poor people will do God only knows, for the Boers

stripped them of every living thing they possessed, and with the

proceeds of this robbery the Boer Government intend to replenish their

coffers.

“The British Resident, Mr. Hudson, it is believed, shuts his eyes to

many things. No doubt his is a difficult position to fill; and doubtless

he is aware that, if he reports everything to the English Government,

the Boers have it in their power to make his position anything but a

pleasant one. In any case, the English portion of the community here,

while admitting his good qualities socially, have little confidence in

him officially.

“My object in writing this letter, however, is not so much to show what

a disgraceful state the Government is in, as to try and awaken sympathy

in the breasts of my countrymen for the cause of these loyal Chiefs.

While the Government are writing despatches to the British Resident,

these Chiefs and their people are being ruined past remedying.”

VI

A VISIT TO THE CHIEF SECOCOENI[*]

[*] This paper was written just before the Annexation of the

Transvaal in 1877.

Towards the end of March I had occasion to visit the Basuto chief

Secocoeni, in his native stronghold beyond the Loolu Berg, a range to

the north-east of Pretoria, about 250 miles away; and as this journey

was typical of travelling in the wilds of South Africa, an account of it

may prove interesting.

It is perhaps necessary to explain, for the benefit of those who are not

acquainted with South African politics, that Secocoeni is the chieftain

who has been at war with the late Transvaal Republic, who drove back its

forces, capturing some 7000 head of cattle. It is from this raid that

the present state of affairs has arisen; so that this obscure chief,

with his 9000 warriors, has materially affected the future destinies of

South Africa. Negotiations of peace had been set on foot, and it was

in connection with these delicate matters that the journey was to be

undertaken.

“Going to Secocoeni at this time of year! Ah!” said one gentleman.

“Well, look here. I sent five natives through that country in this same

month (March) last year; out of those five, three died of the fever, and

the other two just got through with their lives. I only tell you, you

know, that you may take precautions. This is a bad fever year.” However,

fever or no fever, we had to go. As it was necessary to travel rapidly,

we could only take four riding-horses, three for ourselves and the

fourth for a Zulu named “Lankiboy,” who also led a pack-horse,

and carried an enormous “knob-kerry,” or shillelagh, stuck in his

button-hole, as though it were a wedding-bouquet.

Behind our saddles were fastened our saddle-bags, containing a change

of clothing, and in front we strapped a rug and a mackintosh.

Our commissariat consisted of four tins of potted ham, and our

medicine-chest of some quinine, Cockle’s pills, and a roll of

sticking-plaster, which, with a revolver and a hunting-knife or two,

completed our equipment.

We knew little of our route save that our destination lay due east, so

due east we steered. After riding for about twenty miles, and crossing

the Mahaliesburg range, that stretches away north for hundreds of miles,

we came to a Boer’s house, where we off-saddled to feed our horses. It

must be understood that the Boers were the one certain difficulty, and

one of the possible dangers, to be encountered on our road, for at no

time are they are pleasant people to deal with, and just now they are

remarkably unpleasant towards Englishmen.

For instance, at this first house, we managed to get some forage for our

horses, before our scowling host found out who we were, but not a bit

could we get to eat. “Have you no bread, myn Heer?” “We have no bread

to spare.” “Have you any eggs?” “We have no eggs.” “Can you let us

have some milk?” “Susan, have you got any milk to give these carles

(fellows)?” Finally, we succeeded in buying three cups of milk for a

shilling, “as a favour,” and that is all we got from sunrise to sunset.

Riding, on empty stomachs, for another sixty miles over the plains, we

came to a Boer’s house where we had to sleep. Just before we reached the

door, I noticed what I have often seen since, some graves in a row, with

heaps of stones piled over them. It appears that these people do not

care about bring buried in consecrated ground, their only anxiety being

to be put in a coffin, and they are generally laid to rest near to their

doors. There is neither railing nor headstone, and no trees or flowers,

those green emblematic garments with which civilised people try to hide

the ugliness of death. I remember once seeing several graves within two

or three yards of the public road, so that in a year or so the waggons

will be rumbling over the heads of those who lie beneath.

When you ride up to a Boer’s house, the etiquette is to wait until some

member of the family asks you to off-saddle, and then you must go in

and shake hands with every one, a most disagreeable custom. None of the

women--who are very plain--rise to meet one, they just hold out their

hands. This house was a fair specimen of the sort of habitation indulged

in by the ordinary Boer. The main room was about eighteen feet square,

with that kind of door which allows the upper half to open whilst the

lower remains shut, such as is used in stables in England. The flooring

is made of cow-dung, into which peach stones are trodden at the

threshold, in order to prevent its wearing away. The furniture consists

of a deal table and some chairs, rather nearly made of strips of hide

fastened to a wooden frame. There is no ceiling, but only beams, to

which are fastened strips of “biltong,” or game’s flesh, dried in the

sun. Out of this room open one or two more, in which the whole family

sleep, without much attempt at privacy.

Sitting about the room were two or three young mothers, without

stockings and nursing babies; in the corner, on a chair, made twice as

large as any of the others, reposed the mother of the family, a woman of

large size. The whole house was pervaded by a sickly odour, like that of

a vault, whilst the grime and filth of it baffle description. And this

was the place we had to eat and sleep in. However, there was no help for

it; the only thing to do was to light one’s pipe, and smoke. After an

hour or so, supper was put upon the table, consisting of a bowl full of

boiled bones, a small stack of mealie cobs, and, be it added, some good

bread-and-butter. The eating arrangements of these people are certainly

very trying. The other day we had to eat our dinner in a Boer’s house,

with a reeking ox-hide, just torn from the animal, lying on the floor

beside us, together with portions of the poor beast’s head whose flesh

we were eating. However, on this occasion we were spared the ox-hide,

and, being very hungry, managed to put up with the other discomforts.

After a long grace our suppers were served out to us. I remember I got

an enormous bone with but little flesh on it, which, if I may form an

opinion from its great size and from a rapid anatomical survey, must

have been the tibia of an ox. A young Boer sat opposite to me--a

wonderful fellow. He got through several mealie cobs (and large ones

too) whilst I was eating half a one. His method was peculiar, and shows

what practice can do. He shoved a mealie cob into his mouth, gave it

a bite and a wrench, just like one of those patent American threshing

machines, brought the cob out perfectly clear of grain, and took

another. After the supper was over, we had another long grace ending

with: “voor spijze en drunk de Heer ik dank” (for food and drink the

Lord I thank).

After supper we went outside in order to escape the feet-washing

ceremony (all in the same water) which this “simple pastoral people”

are said to indulge in, and which they might expect the “uitlander”

(stranger) to enter into with enthusiasm. When we came back, we

found that the women--who, by-the-by, do not eat till the men have

finished--had done their meal, and gone to bed, having first made us up

a luxurious couch on the floor, consisting of a filthy feather-bed, and

an equally filthy blanket. My heart misgave me when I looked at that

bed. It may have been fancy, but once or twice I thought it moved.

However, there was no choice, unless we chose to sit up all night; so in

we got, looking for all the world like three big sun-burned dolls put

to bed by some little girl. I, as the youngest, blew out the light, and

then!--from every side _they_ came. Up one’s arms, up one’s legs,

down one’s back they scampered, till life became a burden. Sleep was

impossible; one could only lie awake and calculate the bites per minute,

and the quantity of blood one would lose before daybreak. Cold as it

was, I would have turned out and slept in the veldt, only my rug was

over my two companions as well as myself, so I could not take it. I have

slept in a good many different places, and in very fairly uncomfortable

places, but I never had such a night before.

At the first grey dawn of morning the old “frau” came stumbling out of

the bedroom, and sat down without ceremony in her big chair. Waiting

till she thought that we had reached a sufficiently advanced stage in

our toilette--and her idea of what that was must have been a strange

one--she shouted out to her daughters that they could “com,” and in they

all came. Very glad were we when we had paid our bill, which was a heavy

one, and were in the saddle once more, riding through the cold morning

mist that lay in masses on all the ridges of the hills like snow on

mountains.

It was needful to start early, for we had more than sixty miles to

cover, and our ponies had done a good journey the day before. The work

that one can get out of these ponies is marvellous. There was my pony,

“Mettle,” who had my eleven stone to carry, to say nothing of the

saddle, heavy saddle-bags, and a roll of rugs, who came in at the end

of his journey as fresh as paint. We cantered easily over the great

high-veldt prairies, now and then passing clumps of trees, outposts

of the bush-veldt. These enormous plains, notwithstanding their dreary

vastness, have a wild beauty of their own. The grass is what is called

sour grass, and has a peculiar blue tinge, but stock do not like it so

well as the low-veldt grass, which is sweeter, and fattens them more

quickly, though it does not put them in such good fettle. The rock here

is all white sandstone, and thinly overlaps an enormous bed of coal,

cropping up from beneath the water-washed surface. At this time of year

there are very few beasts or birds of any sort to be seen, though in the

winter the veldt is one moving mass of “trek” or migratory game.

Our destination that day was Botsabelo, the most important

mission-station, and one of the very few successful ones, in

South-Eastern Africa. As we neared it, the country gradually broke into

hills of peculiar and beautiful formation, which rendered the last two

hours of our ride, in the dark, through an unknown country, rather a

difficult job. However, we stumbled through streams, and over boulders,

and about nine o’clock were lucky enough to come right upon the station,

where we were most kindly received by Dr. Merensky. The station itself

stands on the brow of a hill surrounded by gardens and orchards; beneath

it lie slope and mountain, stream and valley, over which are dotted

numbers of kraals, to say nothing of three or four substantial houses

occupied by the assistant missionary and German artisans. Near Dr.

Merensky’s house stands the church, by far the best I have seen in the

Transvaal, and there is also a store with some well-built workshops

around it. All the neighbouring country belongs to the station, which

is, in fact, like a small independent State, 40,000 acres in extent.

On a hill-top overshadowing the station, are placed the fortifications,

consisting of thick walls running in a circle with upstanding towers,

in which stand one or two cannon; but it all reminds one more of an old

Norman keep, with its village clustered in its protecting shadow, than

of a modern mission establishment.

Dr. Merensky commenced his labours in Secocoeni’s country, but was

forced to fly from thence by night, with his wife and new-born baby,

to escape being murdered by that Chief’s orders, who, like most Kafir

potentates, has an intense aversion to missionaries. Twelve years ago he

established this station, and, gathering his scattered converts around

him, defied Secocoeni to drive him thence. Twice that Chief has sent out

a force to sweep him away, and murder his people, and twice they have

come and looked, and, like false Sextus, turned back again. The Boers,

too, have more than once threatened to destroy him, for it is unpleasant

to them to have so intelligent a witness in their midst, but they have

never dared to try. The place is really impregnable to Basutus and

Boers; Zulus might carry it, with their grand steady rush, but it would

be at a terrible sacrifice of life. In fact, Dr. Merensky has been

forced, by the pressure of circumstances, to teach his men the use of a

rifle, as well as the truths of Christianity; to trust in God, but also

to “keep their powder dry.” At a few minutes’ notice he can turn out 200

well-armed natives, ready for offence or defence; and the existence

of such a stronghold is of great advantage to the few English in the

neighbourhood, for the Boers know well that should they attack them

they might draw down the vengeance of Dr. Merensky’s formidable body of

Christian soldiers.

We only passed one night at Botsabelo, and next morning went on to

Middelburg, or Nazareth, which is an hour’s ride from the station. Here,

too, we met with a warm welcome from the handful of English residents,

but we were eager to push on as rapidly as possible, for our kind

friends told us that it would be impossible to proceed to Secocoeni’s on

horseback, because of the deadly nature of the country for horses. So

we had to hire an ox-waggon, which they provisioned for us, and, much to

our disgust (as we were pressed for time), were obliged to fall back on

that dilatory method of travelling.

We decided that we would take the three oldest and least valuable horses

with us, in order to proceed with them from Fort Weeber, which was our

next point, to Secocoeni’s town, whither waggons could not reach. Few

English readers are aware that there is a mysterious disease

among horses in South Africa, peculiar to the country, called

“horse-sickness.” During the autumn season it carries off thousands of

horses annually, though some are good and others bad years--a bad fever

year being generally a bad horse-sickness year also, and _vice versa_.

A curious feature about it is, that as the veldt gets “tamed,” that is,

fed off by domesticated animals, the sickness gradually disappears.

No cure has yet been discovered for it, and very few horses pull

through--perhaps, five per cent. These are called “salted horses,” and

are very valuable; as, although they are not proof against the disease,

they are not so liable to take it. A salted horse may be known by the

peculiar looseness and roughness of his skin, and also by a

certain unmistakable air of depression, as though he felt that the

responsibilities of life pressed very heavily upon him. He is like a man

who has dearly bought his experience; he can never forget the terrible

lesson taught in the buying.

On the fourth day from our start we left Middelburg, and, taking a

north-east course from this outpost of civilisation, overtook the

waggon, and camped, after a twenty miles’ trek, just on the edge of the

bush-veldt. We had two young Boers to drive our waggons--terrible louts.

However, they understood how to drive a waggon, and whilst one of them

drove, the other would sit for hours, with a vacant stare on his face,

thinking. It is a solemn fact that, from the time we left Middelburg

till the time we returned, neither of those fellows touched water, that

is, to wash themselves. The only luxury in the shape of comforts of the

toilette which they allowed themselves was a comb with a brass back,

carefully tied to the roof of the waggon with two strips of ox-hide

thick enough to have held a hundredweight of lead. I don’t think they

ever used it--it was too great a luxury for general use--but they would

occasionally untie it and look at it. Our own outfit in the waggon was

necessarily scanty, consisting of a few iron pots and plates, a kettle,

some green blankets, a lantern, and an old anti-friction grease-can used

for water, which gave it a fine flavour of waggon-wheels. We also had

a “cartle,” or wooden frame, across which were stretched strips of hide

fitted into the waggon about two feet above the floor, and intended to

sleep on; but the less said about that the better.

After we left the great high-veldt plains, over which the fresh breeze

was sweeping, we dropped down into a beautiful bush-clad valley with

mountains on either side. It was like making a sudden descent into the

tropics. Not a breath of wind stirred the trees, and the sun shone with

a steady burning heat. Scarcely a sound broke the silence, save the

murmur of the river we crossed and recrossed, the occasional pipe of a

bird, and the melancholy cry, half sigh, half bark, of an old baboon,

who was swinging himself along, indignant at our presence.

If the sights and sounds were beautiful, the sun was hot, and the road

fearful, and we were indeed glad when we reached “Whitehead’s Cobalt

Mine,” and were most kindly received by the gentlemen who superintend

the works. The house used to belong to some Boer, who had deserted

the place, but left behind him a beautiful orchard of orange and peach

trees. The place is very feverish and unhealthy, and the white ants

so troublesome that everything has to be stood in sardine tins full of

ashes.

On our way from the house we went to see the cobalt mine, which is on

a hillside a mile away. It has only been established about three years,

and has existed hitherto under the greatest difficulties as regards

labour, transport, machinery, danger from surrounding native tribes,

&c.; but it has already, the proprietor informed me, reduced the price

of cobalt--the blue dye used to colour such things as the willow-pattern

plates--by one-half in the English market, bringing it down from

somewhere about 140 pounds to 80 pounds a ton. We were very much

astonished to see the amount of work which had been done, as we expected

to find a pit such as the Kafirs work for copper, but instead of that

there was a large slanting shaft quite a hundred yards long, to say

nothing of various openings out of it following branch leads of ore.

There is also a vertical shaft one hundred feet deep, through which the

ore comes up, and by which one can ascend and descend in a bucket. After

we emerged from this awful hole, we went into another, a drive running

straight into the mountain for more than three hundred feet, following a

vein of black oxide of cobalt, which is much more valuable than the ore;

and, though the vein is rarely more than a foot in thickness, pays

very well. Leaving the mine, we rode on past some old Kafir

copper-workings--circular pits--which must have been abandoned, to judge

from their appearance, a hundred years ago, till we came to the banks

of the great “Olifants’” or “Elephants’” river. This magnificent stream,

though it is unnavigable owing to frequent rapids, has stretches miles

long, down which a man-of-war could steam, and after its junction with

the Elands’ River it grows larger and larger till, pursuing a north-east

course, it at length falls into the mighty Limpopo. It is a very

majestic but somewhat sluggish stream, and its water is not very good.

You cannot see the river till you are right upon it, owing to the great

trees with which its steep banks are fringed, and in the early morning

it is quite hidden from bank to bank by a dense mass of billows of white

mist, indescribably strange to look upon.

But, beautiful as this country is, it is most unhealthy for man and

beast. The close odour, the long creeping lines of mist, the rich rank

vegetation, the steady heat of day and night, all say one word, “fever,”

and fever of the most virulent type. The traveller through this sort of

country is conscious of a latent fear lest he should some day begin to

feel hot when he ought to be cold, and cold when he ought to be hot, and

so be stricken down, to rise prematurely old, or perhaps to die, and be

buried in a lonely grave covered with stones to keep off the jackals.

We were travelling in the very worst fever-month, March, when the summer

vegetation is commencing to rot, and throw off its poisonous steam. What

saved us here and afterwards, at Secocoeni’s, was our temperate living,

hard exercise, and plenty of quinine and tobacco-smoke.

All the country through which we were passing is good game-veldt, but we

saw very little and killed nothing. This was chiefly owing to the fact

that we did not dare go out of hearing of the waggon-wheels, for fear

of getting lost in the bush, a thing very easily done. A few years back

this veldt swarmed with big game, with elephants and giraffes, and

they are even now occasionally seen. We managed now and again to get

a glimpse of some of the beautiful “Impala” buck, or of a small lot of

blue wilderbeestes vanishing between the trees, like a troop of wild

horses. There are still plenty of lions about, but we did not hear any:

whether it was that they had gone to the high-veldt after the cattle, or

that they do not roar so much in summer, I do not know. Perhaps it is as

well that we did not, for the roar of a lion is very generally followed

by what the Dutch call a “skrech.” After roaring once or twice to wake

the cattle up, and make them generally uneasy, the lion stations himself

about twenty yards to the windward of the waggon. The oxen get wind of

him and promptly “skrech,” that is, break their rims and run madly into

the veldt. This is just what the lion wants, for now he can pick out a

fat ox and quietly approach him from the other side till he is within

springing distance. He then jumps upon him, crushes his neck with one

bite, and eats him at his leisure.

And so we trekked on through the sunrise, through the burning mid-day

and glowing sunsets, steering by the sun and making our own road; now

through tambouki grass higher than the oxen, and now through dense bush,

till at length, one day, we said good-bye to the Olifants’ just where

the Elands’ River flows into it, and turned our faces eastward. This

course soon brought us on to higher ground and away from the mimosa,

which loves the low, hot valleys, into the region of the sugar bush,

which thrives upon the hill-sides. This sugar bush is a very handsome

and peculiar plant, with soft thick leaves, standing about twenty feet

high. It bears a brush-like flower, each of which in the Cape Colony

contains half a teaspoonful of delicious honey; but, curiously enough,

though in other respects the tree is precisely similar, this is not the

case in the Transvaal or Natal. At the proper season the Cape farmers

go out with buckets and shake the flowers till they have collected

sufficient honey to last them for the winter, a honey more fragrant than

that made by bees.

After a long ride over the open, which must once have been thickly

populated, to judge from the number of remains of kraals, we came at

length to Fort Weeber. The fort is very badly situated in the hollow of

a plain, and so surrounded by fine hills that it is entirely commanded.

It consists of a single sod wall about two feet thick and five high,

capped with loose stones, whilst at two of the corners stand, on raised

platforms, a six-pounder and a three-pounder Whitworth gun. Inside the

wall are built rows of mud huts, which are occupied by the garrison,

leaving an open square, in the midst of which is placed the magazine. We

found the garrison in a wretched condition. They have not received any

pay except Government “good-fors” (promissory notes, generally known as

“good-for-nothings”), so they are in a state of abject poverty; whilst

they are rendered harmless as regards offensive operations, by the

death, from horse-sickness, of eighty-two of the ninety horses

they owned. However, the officers and garrison gave us a very grand

reception. As we rode up, they fired a salute of twelve guns, and then,

after we had dismounted and been received by the officers, we were taken

through a lane made by the garrison drawn up in a double line, and, just

as we got to the middle, “bang” went the eighty rifles over our

heads. Then an address was read (the volunteers are great people for

addresses), but a more practical welcome soon followed in the shape of a

good dinner.

Next morning we started, a party of seven, including the interpreter,

to ride over the Loolu Berg to Secocoeni’s, a distance of about

thirty-eight miles.

For the first five miles we passed through the most curious granite

formation, a succession of small hills entirely composed of rounded

boulders of granite, weighing from five to 1000 tons, and looking

exactly like piles of gigantic snow-balls hurled together by some mighty

hand. The granite formation prevails in all this part of the country,

and individual boulders sometimes take very curious shapes; for

instance, in the bush-veldt we passed a great column towering high above

the trees, composed of six boulders getting smaller and smaller from

the base up, and each accurately balanced on the one beneath it. Then

we crossed the range of hills which overlooks the fort, and passing

Secocoeni’s old kraal where he used to live before he retreated to his

fastnesses, we arrived at a great alluvial valley nine miles broad, on

the other side of which rises the Loolu. It was on this plain that the

only real fight between the volunteers and Secocoeni’s men took place,

when the former managed to get between the Basutus and the hills,

and shot them down like game, killing over 200 men. Leaving the

battle-field, where the skeletons still lie, a little to our right, we

crossed the plain and came to the foot of the Loolu, all along the base

of which stand neat villages inhabited by Secocoeni’s people. Some of

these villages have been burnt by the volunteers, and the remainder are

entirely deserted, their inhabitants having built fresh huts among the

rocks in almost inaccessible places. The appearance of these white huts

peeping out all over the black rocks was very curious, and reminded one

of the Swiss chalets.

By the stream that runs along past the villages we off-saddled, as both

ourselves and our horses were nearly exhausted by the burning heat; but

as there was not much time to lose, after a short rest we started off

again, and rode on over a bed of magnetic iron lying on the ground in

great lumps of almost pure metal, until we came to a stretch of what

looked remarkably like gold-bearing quartz, and then to a limestone

formation. The whole country is evidently rich beyond measure in

minerals. All this time we were passing through scenery inexpressibly

wild and grand, and when we had arrived at the highest spot of the pass,

it reached a climax of savage beauty. About forty miles in front of us

towered up another magnificent range of blue-tinged mountains known as

the Blue Berg, whilst all around us rose great bush-clad hills, opening

away in every direction towards gorgeous-coloured valleys. The scene was

so grand and solemn that I do not think it lies in the power of words to

describe it.

Here we had to dismount to descend a most fearful precipitous path

consisting of boulders piled together in the wildest confusion, from

one to another of which we had to jump, driving the horses before us.

Half-way down we off-saddled to rest ourselves, and as we did so we

noticed that the gall was running from one of the horses’ noses. We knew

too well what was the matter, and so left him there to die during the

night. This horse was by far the finest we had with us, and his owner

used to boast that the poor beast had often carried him, a heavy man,

from his house to Pretoria, a distance of nearly ninety miles, in

one day. He was also a “salted” horse. It is a curious thing that the

sickness generally kills the best horses first.

After a short rest we started on again, and at the end of another hour

reached the bottom of the pass. From thence we rode along a gulley, that

alternately narrowed and widened, till at length it brought us right on

to Secocoeni’s beautiful, fever-stricken home.

All three of us had seen a good deal of scenery in different parts

of the world, and one of the party was intimately acquainted with the

finest spots in South Africa, but we were forced to admit that we had

never seen anything half so lovely as Secocoeni’s valley. We had seen

grander views, indeed the scene from the top of the pass was grander,

but never anything that so nearly approached perfection in detail.

Beautiful it was, beautiful beyond measure, but it was the sort of

beauty under whose veil are hidden fever and death. And so we pushed on,

through the still hot eventide, till at length we came to the gates

of the town, where we found “Makurupiji,” Secocoeni’s “mouth” or prime

minister, who had evidently been informed of our coming by his spies

waiting to receive us.[*]

[*] Makurupiji committed suicide after the town had been stormed,

preferring death to imprisonment.

Conducted by this grandee, we went on past the Chief’s kraals, down to

the town, whence flocked men, women, and children, to look on the white

lords; all in a primitive state of dress, consisting of a strip of skin

tied round the middle, and the women with their hair powdered with some

preparation of iron, which gave it a metallic blue tinge.

At length we stopped just opposite a beautiful fortified kopje[*]

perforated by secret caves where the ammunition of the tribe is hidden.

No stranger is allowed to enter these caves, or even to ascend the

kopje, though they do not object to one’s inspecting some of the other

fortifications. Dismounting from our wearied horses, we passed through a

cattle kraal and came into the presence of “Swasi,” Secocoeni’s uncle,

a fat old fellow who was busily engaged in braying a skin. Nearly every

male Basutu one meets, be he high or low, is braying a hide of some

sort, either by rubbing or by masticating it. It is a curious sight to

come across some twenty of these fellows, every one of them twisting or

chewing away.

[*] Afterwards stormed in the attack on Secocoeni’s town by

Sir Garnet Wolseley.

Swasi was a sort of master of the household; his duty it was to receive

strangers and see that they were properly looked after; so, after

shaking hands with us furiously (he was a wonderful fellow to shake

hands), he conducted us to our hut. It stood in a good-sized courtyard

beautifully paved with a sort of concrete of limestone which looked very

clean and white, and surrounded by a hedge of reeds and sticks tightly

tied together, inside which ran a slightly raised bench, also made of

limestone. The hut itself was neatly thatched, the thatch projecting

several feet, so as to form a covering to a narrow verandah that ran all

round it. Inside it was commodious, and ornamented after the Egyptian

style with straight and spiral lines, painted on with some kind of red

ochre, and floored with a polished substance. Certainly these huts are

as much superior to those of the Zulus as those who dwell in them are

inferior to that fine race. What the Basutus gain in art and handiness

they lose in manliness and gentlemanly feeling.

We had just laid ourselves down on the grass mats in the courtyard--for

it was too hot to go into the hut--thoroughly exhausted with our day’s

work and the heat, when in came two men, each of them dragging a fine

indigenous sheep. They were accompanied by Makurupiji, who brought us a

message from Secocoeni to the effect that he, the Chief, sent to greet

us, the great Chiefs; that he sent us also a morsel to eat, lest we

should be hungry in his house. It was but a morsel--it should have been

an ox, for great Chiefs should eat much meat--but he himself was pinched

with hunger, his belt was drawn very tight by the Boers. He was poor,

and so his gift was poor; still, he would see if to-morrow he could find

a beast that had something besides the skin on its bones, that he might

offer it to us. After this magniloquent address the poor animals were

trundled out by the other gate to have their throats cut.

After getting some supper and taking our quinine, we turned in and

slept that night in the best way that the heat would let us, rising next

morning with the vain hope of getting a bathe. Of all the discomforts

we experienced at Secocoeni’s, the scarcity and badness of the water was

the worst. Bad water, when you are in a hotbed of fever, is a terrible

privation. And so we had to go unwashed, with the exception of having a

little water poured over our hands out of gourds. We must have presented

a curious sight at breakfast that morning. Before us knelt a sturdy

Kafir, holding a stick in each hand, on which were respectively speared

a leg and a side of mutton, from which we cut off great hunks with our

hunting-knives, and, taking them in our fingers, devoured them like

beasts of prey. If we got a bit we did not like, our mode of dispensing

of it was simple and effective. We threw it to one of the natives

standing round us, among whom was the heir-apparent, who promptly

gobbled it up.

Breakfast finished, a message came from Secocoeni asking for spirits to

drink. But we were not to be taken in in this way, for we knew well that

if we sent the Chief spirits we should get no business done that day,

and we did not care to run the risk of fever by stopping longer than we

could help; so we sent back a message to the effect that business

must come first and spirits afterwards. The head men, who brought this

message, said that they could perfectly understand our objection, as far

as Secocoeni and ourselves were concerned, since we had to talk, but

as they had only to sit still and listen there could be no possible

objection to their having something to drink. This argument was

ingenious, but we did not see the force of it, as our stock of spirits,

which we had brought more for medicine than anything else, was very

limited. Still, we were obliged to promise them a “tot” after the

talking was over, in order to keep them civil.

Our message had the desired effect, for presently Secocoeni sent to say

that it was now time to talk, and that his head men would lead us

to him. So we started up, accompanied by “Makurupiji,” “Swasi,” and

“Galook,” the general of his forces, a fat fellow with a face exactly

like a pig. The sun beat down with such tremendous force that, though

we had only three-quarters of a mile to walk, we felt quite tired by

the time we reached the Chief’s kraals. Passing through several cattle

kraals, we came to a shed under which sat the heir-apparent dressed in

a gorgeous blanket with his court around him. Leaving him, we entered an

inner cattle kraal, where, in one corner, stood a large, roughly-built

shed, under the shade of which squatted over a hundred of the head men

of the tribe, gathered together by Secocoeni to “witness.”[*]

[*] As each chief came up to the meeting-place he would pass

before the enclosure where Secocoeni was sitting and salute

him, by softly striking the hands together, and saying

something that sounded like “Marema.”

Opening out of this kraal was the chief’s private enclosure, where stood

his huts. As we drew near, Secocoeni, who had inspired such terror into

the bold Burghers of the Republic, the chief of nine thousand warriors,

the husband of sixty-four wives, the father of a hundred children, rose

from the ox-hide on which he was seated, under the shade of a tree, and

came to the gate to meet us. And a queer sight this potentate was as

he stood there shaking hands through the gate. Of middle age, about

forty-five years of age, rather fat, with a flat nose, and small,

twinkling, black eyes, he presented an entirely hideous and

semi-repulsive appearance. His dress consisted of a cotton blanket

over which was thrown a tiger-skin kaross, and on his head was stuck

an enormous old white felt hat, such as the Boers wear, and known as a

“wilderbeeste chaser.”

After we had been duly introduced, he retreated to his ox-hide, and we

went and squatted down among the head men. Secocoeni took no active

part in the proceedings that followed; he sat in his enclosure and

occasionally shouted out some instructions to Makurupiji, who was

literally his “mouth,” speaking for him and making use of the pronoun

“I.” During the four hours or so that we were there Secocoeni never

stopped chewing an intoxicating green leaf, very much resembling that of

the pomegranate, of which he occasionally sent us some.

After the business of the Commission had come to an end, and some of our

party started on their homeward journey, we were detained by Secocoeni,

who wished to see us privately. He sent for us to his private enclosure,

and we sat down on his ox-hide with him and one or two head men. It was

very curious to see this wily old savage shoving a handful of leaves

into his mouth, and giving his head a shake, and then making some shrewd

remark which went straight to the bottom of whatever question was in

hand. At length we bade Secocoeni good-bye, having promised to deliver

all his respectful messages to our chief, and, thoroughly wearied,

arrived at our own hut. Tired as we were, we thought it would be better

to start for the fort at once, rather than risk the fever for another

night. So we made up our minds to a long moonlight ride, and, saddling

up, got out of Secocoeni’s town about 3.30 P.M., having looked our last

upon this beautiful fever-trap, which only wants water scenery to make

it absolutely perfect. Half-way up, we saw the poor horse we had left

sick the day before, lying dead, with dry foam all round his mouth,

and half his skin taken off by some passing Basutu. A couple of hundred

yards farther on we found another dying, left by the party who had

started before us. It was in truth a valley of the shadow of death.

Luckily our horses lasted us back to the fort, but one died there, and

the other two are dead since.

Beautiful as was the scene by day, in the light of the full moon it was

yet more surpassingly lovely. It was solemn, weird. Every valley became

a mysterious deep, and every hill, stone, and tree shone with that cold

pale lustre which the moon alone can throw. Silence reigned, the silence

of the dead, broken only once or twice by the wild whistling challenge

of one of Secocoeni’s warriors as he came bounding down the rocks,

to see who we were that passed. The effect of the fires by the huts,

perched among the rocks at the entrance to the pass, was very strange

and beautiful, reminding one of the midnight fires of the Gnomes in the

fairy tales.

And so we rode on, hour after hour, through the night, till we well-nigh

fell asleep in our saddles, and at length, about two o’clock in the

morning, we reached the waggons to find the young Boers fast asleep

in our bed. We kicked them out, and, after swallowing some biscuits,

tumbled in ourselves for the few hours’ rest which we so sadly needed.

On the following morning, Thursday, two of the party bade farewell to

our hosts at the fort and started on one of the quickest possible treks,

leaving our companion to proceed across country to the fort established

by President Burgers, or “Porocororo,” as the Basutus call him, at

Steelport.

We returned to Middelburg by an entirely different route from that

by which we came. Leaving the valley of the Olifants to our right, we

trekked along the high-veldt, and thus avoided all the fever country.

Roughly speaking, we had about 120 miles of country to get over to reach

Middelburg, and we determined to do this in three days and two nights,

so as to get in on the Saturday night, as we were much pressed for time.

Now, according to English ideas, it is no great thing to travel 120

miles in three days; but it is six days’ journey in an ox-waggon over

bad country, and we were going to do it in half that time by doubling

the speed.

Of course, to do this we had to trek night and day. For instance, on the

first day we inspanned at 10.30 A.M. and trekked till within an hour

of sundown; at sundown we inspanned, and with one outspan trekked till

sunrise; outspanned for two hours, and on again, being seventeen and

a half hours under the yoke out of the twenty-four, and covering

fifty-five miles. Of course, one cannot do this sort of travelling for

more than two or three days without killing the oxen; as it was, towards

the end, as soon as the yokes were lifted off, the poor beasts dropped

down as though they were shot, and most of them went lame. Another

great disadvantage is that one suffers very much from want of sleep. The

jolting of the springless machine, as it lumbered over rocks a foot high

and through deep spruits or streams, brought our heads down with such a

fearful jar on the saddle-bags that we used for pillows, that all sleep

was soon knocked out of them; or, even if we were lucky enough to be

crossing a stretch of tolerably smooth ground, there was a swaying

motion that rubbed one’s face up and down till the skin was nearly

worn through, polishing the saddle-bags to such an extent that we might

almost have used them for looking-glasses as well as pillows.

At Secocoeni’s kraal we had engaged two boys to carry our packs as far

as the fort, who, on their arrival, were so well satisfied with the way

in which we treated them that they requested to be allowed to proceed

with us. These young barbarians, who went respectively by the names of

“Nojoke” and “Scowl,” as being the nearest approach in English to their

Sisutu names, were the greatest possible source of amusement to us,

with their curious ways.[*] I never saw such fellows to sleep; it is

a positive fact that Nojoke used frequently to take his rest coiled up

like a boa constrictor in a box at the end of the waggon, in which box

stood three iron pots with their sharp legs sticking up. On those legs

he peacefully slumbered when the waggon was going over ground that

prohibited our even stopping in it. “Scowl” was not a nice boy to look

at, for his naked back was simply cut to pieces and covered with huge

weals, of which everybody, doubtless, thought we were the cause. On

inquiring how he came to get such a tremendous thrashing, it turned

out that these Basutus have a custom of sending young men of a certain

age[+] out in couples, each armed with a good “sjambok” (a whip cut from

the hide of a sea-cow), to thrash one another till one gives in, and

that it was in one of these encounters that the intelligent Scowl got

so lacerated; but, as he remarked with a grin, “_My_ back is nothing, the

chiefs should see that of the other boy.”

[*] Of these two lads, Nojoke subsequently turned out

worthless, and went to the Diamond Fields, whilst Scowl

became an excellent servant, until he took to wearing a

black coat, and turned Christian, when he shortly afterwards

developed into a drunkard and a thief.

[+] The age of puberty.

We spent one night at Middelburg, and next morning, bidding adieu to our

kind English friends, started for Pretoria, taking care to end our first

day’s journey at a house where an Englishman lived, so as to ensure a

clean shakedown. Here we discovered that the horse I was riding (the

sole survivor of the five we had started with) had got the sickness,

and so we had to leave him and hire another. This horse, by the by,

recovered, which is the only instance of an animal’s conquering the

disease which has yet come under my observation. We hired the new horse

from a Boer, who charged us exactly three times its proper price,

and then preached us a sermon quite a quarter of an hour long on

his hospitality, his kindness of heart, and his willingness to help

strangers. I must tell you that, just as we were going to sleep the

night before, a stranger had come and asked for a shakedown, which was

given to him in the same room. We had risen before daybreak, and my

companion was expatiating to me, in clear and forcible language, on the

hypocrisy and scoundrelism of this Boer, when suddenly a sleepy voice

out of the darkness murmured thickly, “I say, stranger, guess you

shouldn’t lose your temper; guess that ‘ere Boer is acting after the

manner of human natur’.” And then the owner of the voice turned over and

went to sleep again.

We had over sixty miles to ride that day, and it must have been about

eight o’clock at night, on the sixteenth day of our journey, when

we reached Pretoria and rode straight up to our camp, where we were

heartily greeted. I am sure that some of our friends must have felt a

little disappointed at seeing us arrive healthy and fat, without a sign

of fever, after all their melancholy predictions. It would not have been

“human natur’” if they had not. When we got to the camp, I called out

to Masooku, my Zulu servant, to come and take the horses. Next moment

I heard a rush and a scuttle in the tent like the scrimmage in a

rabbit-burrow when one puts in the ferrets, and Masooku shouted out in

Zulu, “He has come back! by Chaka’s head, I swear it! It is his voice,

his own voice, that calls me; my father’s, my chief’s!”

And so ended one of the hardest and most interesting journeys

imaginable--a journey in which the risk only added to the pleasure.

Still, I should not care to make it again at the same time of year.

VII

A ZULU WAR-DANCE

In all that world-wide empire which the spirit of the English

colonisation has conquered from out of the realms of the distant and

unknown, and added year by year to the English dominions, it is doubtful

whether there be any one spot of corresponding area, presenting so many

large questions, social and political, as the colony of Natal. Wrested

some thirty years ago from the patriarchal Boers, and peopled by a few

scattered scores of adventurous emigrants, Natal has with hard toil

gained for itself a precarious foothold hardly yet to be called an

existence. Known chiefly to the outside world as the sudden birthplace

of those tremendous polemical missiles which battered so fiercely,

some few years ago, against the walls of the English Church, it is now

attracting attention to the shape and proportion of that unsolved riddle

of the future, the Native Question. In those former days of rude and

hand-to-mouth legislation, when the certain evil of the day had to be

met and dealt with before the possible evil of the morrow, the seeds of

great political trouble were planted in the young colony, seeds whose

fruit is fast ripening before our eyes.

When the strong aggressive hand of England has grasped some fresh

portion of the earth’s surface, there is yet a spirit of justice in

her heart and head which prompts the question, among the first of such

demands, as to how best and most fairly to deal by the natives of

the newly-acquired land. In earlier times, when steam was not, and

telegraphs and special correspondents were equally unknown agencies for

getting at the truth of things, this question was more easily answered

across a width of dividing ocean or continent. Then distant action might

be prompt and sharp on emergency, and no one would be the wiser. But of

late years, owing to these results of civilisation, harsh measures have,

by the mere pressure of public opinion, and without consideration

of their necessity in the eyes of the colonists, been set aside as

impracticable and inhuman. In the case of Natal, most of the early

questions of possession and right were settled, sword in hand, by the

pioneer Dutch, who, after a space of terrible warfare, drove back the

Zulus over the Tugela, and finally took possession of the land. But they

did not hold it long. The same hateful invading Englishman, with his new

ideas and his higher forms of civilisation, who had caused them to quit

the “Old Colony,” the land of their birth, came and drove them, _vi

et armis_, from the land of their adoption. And it was not long before

these same English became lords of this red African soil, from the coast

up to the Drakensberg. Still there were difficulties; for although the

new-comers might be lords of the soil, there remained yet a remnant,

and a very troublesome remnant, of its original and natural masters:

shattered fragments of the Zulu power in Natal, men who had once swept

over the country in the army of Chaka the Terrible, Chaka of the Short

Spear, but who had remained behind in the fair new land, when Chaka’s

raids had been checked by the white man and his deadly weapons.

Remnants, too, of conquered aboriginal tribes, who had found even

Chaka’s rule easier than that of their own chieftains, swelled the

amount to a total of some 100,000 souls.

One of the first acts of the English Government, when it took up the

reins, was to allot to each of these constituent fragments a large

portion of the land. This might perhaps have been short-sighted

legislation, but it arose from the necessity of the moment. According

to even the then received ideas of colonisation and its duties, it

was hardly possible--danger apart--to drive all the natives over

the frontier, so they were allowed to stay and share the rights and

privileges of British subjects. But the evil did not stop there. Ere

long some political refugees, defeated in battle, fled before the

avenging hand of the conqueror, and craved place and protection from the

Government of Natal. It was granted; and the principle once established,

body after body of men poured in: for, in stepping over the boundary

line, they left the regions of ruin and terrible death, and entered

those of peace, security, and plenty.

Thus it is that the native population of Natal, fed from within and

without, has in thirty years increased enormously in number. Secluded

from the outside world in his location, the native has lived in peace

and watched his cattle grow upon a thousand hills. His wealth has become

great and his wives many. He no longer dreads swift “death by order

of the king,” or by word of the witch-doctor. No “impi,” or native

regiment, can now sweep down on him and “eat him up,” that is, carry off

his cattle, put his kraal to the flames, and himself, his people, his

wives, and children to the assegai. For the first time in the story of

the great Kafir race, he can, when he rises in the morning, be sure that

he will not sleep that night, stiff, in a bloody grave. He has tasted

the blessings of peace and security, and what is the consequence? He has

increased and multiplied until his numbers are as grains of sand on the

sea-shore. Overlapping the borders of his location, he squats on private

lands, he advances like a great tidal wave, he cries aloud for room,

more room. This is the trouble which stares us in the face, looming

larger and more distinct year by year; the great over-growing problem

which thoughtful men fear must one day find a sudden and violent

solution. Thus it comes to pass that there hangs low on the horizon of

South Africa the dark cloud of the Native Question. How and when it will

burst no man can pretend to say, but some time and in some way burst it

must, unless means of dispersing it can be found.

There is now at work among the Kafir population the same motive power

which has raised in turn all white nations, and, having built them up

to a certain height, has then set to work to sap them until they have

fallen--the power of civilisation. Hand in hand the missionary and the

trader have penetrated the locations. The efforts of the teacher have

met with but a partial success. “A Christian may be a good man in his

way, but he is a Zulu spoiled,” said Cetywayo, King of the Zulus, when

arguing the question of Christianity with the Secretary for Native

Affairs; and such is, not altogether wrongly, the general feeling of

the natives. With the traders it has been different. Some have dealt

honestly--and more, it is to be feared, dishonestly--not only with those

with whom they have had dealings, but with their fellow-subjects and

their Government. It is these men chiefly who have, in defiance of the

law, supplied the natives with those two great modern elements of danger

and destruction, the gin-bottle and the rifle. The first is as yet

injurious only to the recipients, but it will surely react on those who

have taught them its use; the danger of possessing the rifle may come

home to us any day and at any moment.

Civilisation, it would seem, when applied to black races, produces

effects diametrically opposite to those we are accustomed to observe

in white nations: it debases before it can elevate; and as regards the

Kafirs it is doubtful, and remains to be proved, whether it has much

power to elevate them at all. Take the average Zulu warrior, and it

will be found that, in his natural state, his vices are largely

counter-balanced by his good qualities. In times of peace he is a

simple, pastoral man, leading a good-humoured easy life with his wives

and his cattle, perfectly indolent and perfectly happy. He is a kind

husband and a kinder father; he never disowns his poor relations; his

hospitality is extended alike to white and black; he is open in his

dealings and faithful to his word, and his honesty is a proverb in the

land. True, if war breaks out and the thirst for slaughter comes upon

him, he turns into a different man. When the fierce savage spirit is

once aroused, blood alone will cool it. But even then he has virtues. If

he is cruel, he is brave in the battle; if he is reckless of the lives

of others, he regards not his own; and when death comes, he meets

it without fear, and goes to the spirits of his fathers boldly, as a

warrior should. And now reverse the picture, and see him in the dawning

light of that civilisation which, by intellect and by nature, he is some

five centuries behind. See him, ignoring its hidden virtues, eagerly

seize and graft its most prominent vices on to his own besetting sins.

Behold him by degrees adding cunning to his cruelty, avarice to his love

of possession, replacing his bravery by coarse bombast and insolence,

and his truth by lies. Behold him inflaming all his passions with the

maddening drink of the white man, and then follow him through many

degrees of degradation until he falls into crime and ends in a jail.

Such are, in only too many instances, the consequences of this

partial civilisation, and they are not even counterbalanced, except in

individual cases, by the attempt to learn the truths of a creed which

he cannot, does not, pretend to understand. And if this be the result

in the comparatively few individuals who have been brought under these

influences, it may be fair to argue that it will differ only in degree,

not in kind, when the same influences are brought to bear on the same

material in corresponding proportions. Whatever may or may not be the

effects of our partial civilisation when imperfectly and spasmodically

applied to the vast native population of South Africa, one thing must,

in course of time, result from it. The old customs, the old forms, the

old feelings, must each in turn die away. The outer expression of these

will die first, and it will not be long before the very memory of

them will fade out of the barbaric heart. The rifle must replace, and,

indeed, actually has replaced, the assegai and the shield, and portions

of the cast-off uniforms of all the armies of Europe are to be seen

where, until lately, the bronze-like form of the Kafir warrior went

naked as on the day he was born. But so long as native customs and

ceremonies still linger in some of the more distant locations, so long

will they exercise a certain attraction for dwellers amid tamer scenes.

It is therefore from a belief in the magnetism of contrast that the

highly-civilised reader is invited to come to where he can still meet

the barbarian face to face and witness that wild ceremony, half jest,

half grim earnest--a Zulu war dance.

It was the good fortune of the writer of this sketch to find himself,

some years ago, travelling through the up-country districts of Natal,

in the company of certain high officials of the English Government. The

journey dragged slowly enough by waggon, and some monotonous weeks had

passed before we pitched our camp, one drizzling gusty night, on a high

plateau, surrounded by still loftier hills. A wild and dismal place

it looked in the growing dusk of an autumn evening, nor was it more

suggestively cheerful when we rode away from it next morning in the

sunshine, leaving the waggons to follow slowly. Our faces were set

towards a great mountain, towering high above its fellows, called

Pagadi’s Kop--Pagadi being a powerful chief who had fled from the Zulus

in the early days of the colony, and had ever since dwelt loyally and

peacefully here in this wild place, beneath the protection of the Crown.

Messengers had been duly sent to inform him that he was to receive

the honour of a visit, for your true savage never likes to be taken by

surprise. Other swift-footed runners had come back with the present of

a goat, and the respectful answer, so Oriental in its phraseology, that

“Pagadi was old, he was infirm, yet he would arise and come to greet his

lords.” Every mile or so of our slow progress a fresh messenger would

spring up before us suddenly, as though he had started out of the earth

at our feet, and prefixing his greeting with the royal salute, given

with up-raised arm, “Bayete! Bayete!”--a salutation only accorded to

Zulu royalty, to the governors of the different provinces, and to Sir

T. Shepstone, the Secretary for Native Affairs--he would deliver his

message or his news and fall into the rear. Presently came one saying,

“Pagadi is very old and weak; Pagadi is weary; let his lords forgive him

if he meet them not this day. To-morrow, when the sun is high, he will

come to their place of encampment and greet his lords and hold festival

before them. But let his lords, the white lords of all the land from the

Great Mountain to the Black Water, go up to his kraal, and let them

take the biggest hut and drink of the strongest beer. There his son, the

chief that is to be, and all his wives, shall greet them; let his lords

be honoured by Pagadi, through them.” An acknowledgment was sent, and we

still rode on, beginning the ascent of the formidable stronghold, on the

flat top of which was placed the chief’s kraal. A hard and stiff climb

it was, up a bridle path with far more resemblance to a staircase than a

road. But if the road was bad, the scenery and the vegetation were wild

and beautiful in the extreme. Now we came to a deep “kloof” or cleft

in the steep mountain-side, at the bottom of which, half hidden by the

masses of ferns and rich rank greenery, trickled a little stream; now

to an open space of rough ground, covered only with huge, weather-washed

boulders. A little further on lay a Kafir mealie-garden, where the

tall green stalks were fairly bent to the ground by the weight of the

corn-laden heads, and beyond that, again, a park-like slope of grassy

veldt. And ever, when we looked behind us, the vast undulating plain

over which we had come stretched away in its mysterious silence, till it

blended at length with the soft blue horizon.

At last, after much hard and steady climbing, we reached the top and

stood upon a perfectly level space ten or twelve acres in extent,

exactly in the centre of which was placed the chief’s kraal. Before we

dismounted we rode to the extreme western edge of the plateau, to look

at one of the most perfectly lovely views it is possible to imagine. It

was like coming face to face with great primeval Nature, not Nature

as we civilised people know her, smiling in corn-fields, waving in

well-ordered woods, but Nature as she was on the morrow of the Creation.

There, to our left, cold and grey and grand, rose the great peak,

flinging its dark shadow far beyond its base. Two thousand feet and more

beneath us lay the valley of the Mooi river, with the broad tranquil

stream flashing silver through its midst. Over against us rose another

range of towering hills, with sudden openings in their blue depths

through which could be seen the splendid distances of a champaign

country. Immediately at our feet, and seeming to girdle the great gaunt

peak, lay a deep valley, through which the Little Bushman’s River forced

its shining way. All around rose the great bush-clad hills, so green, so

bright in the glorious streaming sunlight, and yet so awfully devoid of

life, so solemnly silent. It was indeed a sight never to be forgotten,

this wide panoramic out-look, with its towering hills, its smiling

valleys, its flashing streams, its all-pervading sunlight, and its deep

sad silence. But it was not always so lifeless and so still. Some few

years ago those hills, those plains, those rivers were teeming each with

their various creatures. But a short time since, and standing here

at eventide, the traveller could have seen herds of elephants cooling

themselves yonder after their day’s travel, whilst the black-headed

white-tusked sea-cow rose and plunged in the pool below. That bush-clad

hill was the favourite haunt of droves of buffaloes and elands, and on

that plain swarmed thousands upon thousands of springbok and of quagga,

of hartebeest and of oribi. All alien life must cease before the white

man, and so these wild denizens of forest, stream, and plain have passed

away never to return.

Turning at length from the contemplation of a scene so new and so

surprising, we entered the stockade of the kraal. These kraals consist

of a stout outer palisade, and then, at some distance from the first,

a second enclosure, between which the cattle are driven at night, or in

case of danger. At the outer entrance we were met by the chief’s eldest

son, a finely-built man, who greeted us with much respect and conducted

us through rows of huts to the dwelling-places of the chief’s family,

fenced off from the rest by a hedge of Tambouki grass. In the centre

of these stood Pagadi’s hut, which was larger and more finely woven and

thatched than the rest. It is impossible to describe these huts better

than by saying that they resemble enormous straw beehives of the

old-fashioned pattern. In front of the hut were grouped a dozen or so

of women clad in that airiest of costumes, a string of beads. They were

Pagadi’s wives, and ranged from the first shrivelled-up wife of his

youth to the plump young damsel bought last month. The spokeswoman

of the party, however, was not one of the wives, but a daughter

of Pagadi’s, a handsome girl, tall, and splendidly formed, with a

finely-cut face. This prepossessing young lady entreated her lords to

enter, which they did, in a very unlordly way, on their hands and knees.

So soon as the eye became accustomed to the cool darkness of the hut, it

was sufficiently interesting to notice the rude attempts at comfort with

which it was set forth. The flooring, of a mixture of clay and cow-dung,

looked exactly like black marble, so smooth and polished had it been

made, and on its shining, level surface couches of buckskin and gay

blankets were spread in an orderly fashion. Some little three-legged

wooden sleeping-pillows and a few cooking-pots made up its sole

furniture besides. In one corner rested a bundle of assegais and

war-shields, and opposite the door were ranged several large calabashes

full of “twala” or native beer. The chief’s son and all the women

followed us into the hut. The ladies sat themselves down demurely in a

double row opposite to us, but the young chieftain crouched in a distant

corner apart and played with his assegais. We partook of the beer and

exchanged compliments, almost Oriental in their dignified courtesy, in

the soft and liquid Zulu language, but not for long, for we still had

far to ride. The stars were shining in southern glory before we reached

the place of our night’s encampment, and supper and bed were even more

than usually welcome. There is a pleasure in the canvas-sheltered meal,

in the after-pipe and evening talk of the things of the day that has

been and those of the day to come, here, amid these wild surroundings,

which is unfelt and unknown in scenes of greater comfort and higher

civilisation. There is a sense of freshness and freedom in the

wind-swept waggon-bed that is not to be exchanged for the softest couch

in the most luxurious chamber. And when at length the morning comes,

sweet in the scent of flowers, and glad in the voice of birds, it finds

us ready to greet it, not hiding it from us with canopy and blind, as is

the way of cities.

The scene of the coming spectacle of this bright new day lies spread

before us, and certainly no spot could have been better chosen for

dramatic effect. In front of the waggons is a large, flat, open space,

backed by bold rising ground with jutting crags and dotted clumps of

luxuriant vegetation. All around spreads the dense thorn-bush, allowing

but of one way of approach, from the left. During the morning we could

hear snatches of distant chants growing louder and louder as time wore

on, and could catch glimpses of wild figures threading the thorns,

warriors hastening to the meeting-place. All through the past night the

farmers for miles around had been aroused by the loud insistent cries

of the chief’s messengers as they flitted far and wide, stopping but a

moment wherever one of their tribe sojourned, and bidding him come, and

bring plume and shield, for Pagadi had need of him. This day, we may be

sure, the herds are left untended, the mealie-heads ungathered, for the

herdsmen and the reapers have come hither to answer to the summons of

their chief. Little reck they whether it be for festival or war; he

needs them, and has called them, and that is enough. Higher and higher

rose the fitful distant chant, but no one could be seen. Suddenly there

stood before us a creature, a woman, who, save for the colour of her

skin, might have been the original of any one of Macbeth’s “weird

sisters.” Little, withered, and bent nearly double by age, her activity

was yet past comprehension. Clad in a strange jumble of snake-skins,

feathers, furs, and bones, a forked wand in her outstretched hand, she

rushed to and fro before the little group of white men. Her eyes gleamed

like those of a hawk through her matted hair, and the genuineness of her

frantic excitement was evident by the quivering flesh and working face,

and the wild, spasmodic words she spoke. The spirit at least of her

rapid utterances may thus be rendered:--

“Ou, ou, ou, ai, ai, ai. Oh, ye warriors that shall dance before the

great ones of the earth, come! Oh, ye dyers of spears, ye plumed suckers

of blood, come! I, the Isanusi, I, the witch-finder, I, the wise woman,

I, the seer of strange sights, I, the reader of dark thoughts, call ye!

Come, ye fierce ones; come, ye brave ones, come, and do honour to the

white lords! Ah, I hear ye! Ah, I smell ye! Ah, I see ye; ye come, ye

come!”

Hardly had her invocation trailed off into the “Ou, ou, ou, ai, ai, ai,”

with which it had opened, when there rushed over the edge of the hill,

hard by, another figure scarcely less wild, but not so repulsive in

appearance. This last was a finely-built warrior arrayed in the full

panoply of savage war. With his right hand he grasped his spears, and

on his left hung his large black ox-hide shield, lined on its inner side

with spare assegais. From the “man’s” ring round his head arose a single

tall grey plume, robbed from the Kafir crane. His broad shoulders were

bare, and beneath the arm-pits was fastened a short garment of strips of

skin, intermixed with ox-tails of different colours. From his waist hung

a rude kilt made chiefly of goat’s hair, whilst round the calf of the

right leg was fixed a short fringe of black ox-tails. As he stood before

us with lifted weapon and outstretched shield, his plume bending to the

breeze, and his savage aspect made more savage still by the graceful,

statuesque pose, the dilated eye and warlike mould of the set features,

as he stood there, an emblem and a type of the times and the things

which are passing away, his feet resting on ground which he held on

sufferance, and his hands grasping weapons impotent as a child’s

toy against those of the white man,--he who was the rightful lord of

all,--what reflections did he not induce, what a moral did he not teach!

The warrior left us little time, however, for either reflections or

deductions, for, striking his shield with his assegai, he rapidly poured

forth this salutation:--

“Bayete, Bayete, O chief from the olden times, O lords and chief of

chiefs! Pagadi, the son of Masingorano, the great chief, the leader of

brave ones, the son of Ulubako, greets you. Pagadi is humble before you;

he comes with warrior and with shield, but he comes to lay them at your

feet. O father of chiefs, son of the great Queen over the water, is

it permitted that Pagad’ approach you? Ou, I see it is, your face is

pleasant; Bayete, Bayete!”

He ends, and, saluting again, springs forward, and, flying hither and

thither, chants the praises of his chief. “Pagadi,” he says, “Pagad’,

chief and father of the Amocuna, is coming. Pagad’, the brave in battle,

the wise in council, the slayer of warriors; Pagad’ who slew the tiger

in the night time; Pagadi, the rich in cattle, the husband of many

wives, the father of many children. Pagad’ is coming, but not alone; he

comes surrounded with his children, his warriors. He comes like a king

at the head of his brave children. Pagadi’s soldiers are coming; his

soldiers who know well how to fight; his soldiers and his captains who

make the hearts of brave men to sink down; his shakers of spears; his

quaffers of blood. Pagad’ and his soldiers are coming; tremble all ye,

ou, ou, ou!”

As the last words die on his lips the air is filled with a deep,

murmuring sound like distant thunder; it swells and rolls, and finally

passes away to give place to the noise of the rushing of many feet. Over

the brow of the hill dashes a compact body of warriors, running swiftly

in lines of four, with their captain at their head, all clad in the same

wild garb as the herald. Each bears a snow-white shield carried on the

slant, and above each warrior’s head rises a grey heron’s plume. These

are the advance-guard, formed of the “greys” or veteran troops. As they

come into full view the shields heave and fall, and then from every

throat bursts the war-song of the Zulus. Passing us swiftly, they

take up their position in a double line on our right, and stand there

solemnly chanting all the while. Another rush of feet, and another

company flits over the hill towards us, but they bear coal-black

shields, and the drooping plumes are black as night; they fall into

position next the firstcomers, and take up the chant. Now they come

faster and faster, but all through the same gap in the bush. The red

shields, the dun shields, the mottled shields, the yellow shields,

follow each other in quick but regular succession, till at length there

stands before us a body of some five hundred men, presenting, in their

savage dress, their various shields and flashing spears, as wild a

spectacle as it is possible to conceive.

But it is not our eyes only that are astonished, for from each of those

five hundred throats there swells a chant never to be forgotten.

From company to company it passes, that wild, characteristic song, so

touching in its simple grandeur, so expressive in its deep, pathetic

volume. The white men who listened had heard the song of choirs ringing

down resounding aisles, they had been thrilled by the roll of oratorios

pealing in melody, beautiful and complex, through the grandest of man’s

theatres, but never till now had they heard music of voices so weird,

so soft and yet so savage, so simple and yet so all-expressive of the

fiercest passions known to the human heart. Hark! now it dies; lower and

lower it sinks, it grows faint, despairing: “Why does he not come, our

chief, our lord? Why does he not welcome his singers? Ah! see, they

come, the heralds of our lord! our chief is coming to cheer his

praisers, our chief is coming to lead his warriors.” Again it rises

and swells louder and louder, a song of victory and triumph. It rolls

against the mountains, it beats against the ground: “He is coming, he is

here, attended by his chosen. Now we shall go forth to slay; now shall

we taste of the battle.” Higher yet and higher, till at length the

chief, Pagadi, swathed in war-garments of splendid furs, preceded by

runners and accompanied by picked warriors, creeps slowly up. He is

old and tottering, and of an unwieldy bulk. Two attendants support

him, whilst a third bears his shield, and a fourth (oh bathos!) a

cane-bottomed chair. One moment the old man stands and surveys his

warriors and listens to the familiar war-cry. As he stands, his face

is lit with the light of battle, the light of remembered days. The

tottering figure straightens itself, the feeble hand becomes strong once

more. With a shout, the old man shakes off his supporters and grasps his

shield, and then, forgetting his weakness and his years, he rushes to

his chieftain’s place in the centre of his men. And as he comes the

chant grows yet louder, the time yet faster, till it rises, and rings,

and rolls, no longer a chant, but a war-cry, a paean of power. Pagadi

stops and raises his hand, and the place is filled with a silence that

may be felt. But not for long. The next moment five hundred shields

are tossed aloft, five hundred spears flash in the sunshine, and with a

sudden roar, forth springs the royal salute, “Bayete!”

The chief draws back and gives directions to his _indunas_, his

thinkers, his wise ones, men distinguished from their fellows by the

absence of shield and plume; the _indunas_ pass on the orders to the

captains, and at once the so-called dance begins. First they manoeuvre

a little in absolute silence, and changing their position with wonderful

precision and rapidity; but as their blood warms there comes a sound as

of the hissing of ten thousand snakes, and they charge and charge again.

A pause, and the company of “greys” on our right, throwing itself into

open order, flits past us like so many vultures to precipitate itself

with a wild, whistling cry on an opposing body which rushed to meet

it. They join issue, they grapple; on them swoops another company, then

another and another, until nothing is to be distinguished except a mass

of wild faces heaving; of changing forms rolling and writhing, twisting

and turning, and, to all appearances, killing and being killed, whilst

the whole air is pervaded with a shrill, savage sibillation. It is not

always the same cry; now it is the snorting of a troop of buffaloes, now

the shriek of the eagle as he seizes his prey, anon the terrible cry

of the “night-prowler,” the lion, and now--more thrilling than all--the

piercing wail of a woman. But whatever the cry, the cadence rises and

falls in perfect time and unanimity; no two mix with one another so as

to mar the effect of each.

Again the combatants draw back and pause, and then forth from the ranks

springs a chosen warrior, and hurls himself on an imaginary foe. He

darts hither and thither with wild activity, he bounds five feet into

the air like a panther, he twists through the grass like a snake, and,

finally, making a tremendous effort, he seems to slay his airy opponent,

and sinks exhausted to the ground. The onlookers mark their approval

or disapproval of the dancer’s feats by the rising and falling of the

strange whistling noise which, without the slightest apparent movement

of face or lip, issues from each mouth. Warrior after warrior comes

forth in turn from the ranks and does battle with his invisible foe, and

receives his meed of applause. The last warrior to spring forward with a

wild yell is the future chief, Pagadi’s son and successor, our friend

of yesterday. He stands, with his shield in one hand and his lifted

battle-axe--borne by him alone--in the other, looking proudly around,

and rattling his lion-claw necklets, whilst from every side bursts forth

a storm of sibillating applause, not from the soldiers only, but from

the old men, women, and children. Through all his fierce pantomimic

dance it continues, and when he has ended it redoubles, then dies away,

but only to burst out again and again with unquenchable enthusiasm.

In order, probably, to give the warriors a brief breathing space,

another song is now set up, and it is marvellous the accuracy and

knowledge of melody with which the parts are sung, like a glee of catch,

the time being kept by a conductor, who rushes from rank to rank beating

time with a wand. Yet it is hardly like chanting, rather like a weird,

sobbing melody, with tones in it which range from the deepest bass to

the shrillest treble. It ends in a long sigh, and then follows a scene,

a tumult, a melee, which hardly admits of a description in words. The

warriors engage in a mimic combat, once more they charge, retreat,

conquer, and are defeated, all in turns. In front of them, exciting them

to new exertions, with word and gesture, undulate in a graceful dance

of their own the “intombis,” the young beauties of the tribe, with green

branches in their hands, and all their store of savage finery glittering

on their shapely limbs. Some of these maidens are really handsome,

and round them again dance the children, armed with mimic spears and

shields. Wild as seems the confusion, through it all, even the moments

of highest excitement, some sort of rough order is maintained; more,

it would seem, by mutual sounds than by word of command or sense of

discipline.

Even a Zulu warrior must, sooner or later, grow weary, and at length

the signal is given for the dance to end. The companies are drawn up in

order again, and receive the praise and thanks of those in whose honour

they had been called together. To these compliments they reply in a

novel and imposing fashion. At a given signal each man begins to softly

tap his ox-hide shield with the handle of his spear, producing a sound

somewhat resembling the murmur of the distant sea. By slow degrees it

grows louder and louder, till at length it rolls and re-echoes from the

hills like thunder, and comes to its conclusion with a fierce, quick

rattle. This is the royal war-salute of the Zulus, and is but rarely

to be heard. One more sonorous salute with voice and hand, and then the

warriors disappear as they came, dropping swiftly and silently over the

brow of the hill in companies. In a few moments no sign or vestige

of dance or dancers remained, save, before our eyes, the well-trodden

ground, a few lingering girls laden with large calabashes of beer, and

in our ears some distant dying snatches of chants. The singers were on

their joyful way to slay and devour the oxen provided as a stimulus and

reward for them by their chief’s liberality.

When the last dusky figure had topped the rising ground over which the

homeward path lay, and had stood out for an instant against the flaming

background of the western sun, and then dropped, as it were, back into

its native darkness beyond those gates of fire, the old chief drew near.

He had divested himself of his heavy war-dress, and sat down amicably

amongst us.

“Ah,” he said, taking the hand of Sir Theophilus Shepstone, and

addressing him by his native name, “Ah! t’Sompseu, t’Sompseu, the

seasons are many since first I held this your hand. Then we two were

young, and life lay bright before us, and now you have grown great, and

are growing grey, and I have grown very old! I have eaten the corn of my

time, till only the cob is left for me to suck, and, _ow_, it is bitter.

But it is well that I should grasp this your hand once more, oh, holder

of the Spirit of Chaka,[*] before I sit down and sleep with my fathers.

_Ow_, I am glad.”

[*] The reader must bear in mind that the Zulu warrior is

buried sitting and in full war-dress. Chaka, or T’chaka, was

the founder of the Zulu power.

Imposing as was this old-time war-dance, it is not difficult to imagine

the heights to which its savage grandeur must have swelled when it was

held--as was the custom at each new year--at the kraal of Cetywayo,

King of the Zulus. Then 30,000 warriors took part in it, and a tragic

interest was added to the fierce spectacle by the slaughter of many men.

It was, in fact, a great political opportunity for getting rid of the

“irreconcilable” element from council and field. Then, in the moment of

wildest enthusiasm, the witch-finder darted forward and lightly touched

with a switch some doomed man, sitting, it may be, quietly among the

spectators, or capering with his fellow-soldiers. Instantly he was led

away, and his place knew him no more.

Throughout the whole performance there was one remarkable and genuine

feature, the strong personal attachment of each member of the tribe

to its chief--not only to the fine old chief, Pagadi, their leader in

former years, but to the head and leader for the years to come.

It must be remembered that this system of chieftainship and its

attendant law is, to all the social bearings of South African native

life, what the tree is to its branches; it has grown through long, long

ages amid a people slow to forget old traditions, and equally slow to

receive new ideas; dependent on it are all the native’s customs, all his

keen ideas of right and justice; in it lies embodied his history of the

past, and from it springs his hope for the future. Surely even the most

uncompromising of those marching under the banner of civilisation

must hesitate before they condemn this deep-rooted system to instant

uprootal.[*] The various influences of the white man have eaten into the

native system as rust into iron, and their action will never cease till

all be destroyed. The bulwarks of barbarism, its minor customs and minor

laws, are gone, or exist only in name; but its two great principles,

polygamy and chieftainship, yet flourish and are strong. Time will undo

his work, and find for these also a place among forgotten things. And it

is the undoubted duty of us English, who absorb people and territories

in the high name of civilisation, to be true to our principles and our

aim, and aid the great destroyer by any and every safe and justifiable

means. But between the legitimate means and the rash, miscalculating

uprootal of customs and principles, which are not the less venerable and

good in their way because they do not accord with our own present ideas,

there is a great gulf fixed. Such an uprootal might precipitate an

outburst of the very evils it aims at destroying.

[*] I do not wish the remarks in this paper, which was

written some years ago, to be taken as representing my

present views on the Natal native question, formed after a

longer and more intimate acquaintance with its

peculiarities, for which I beg to refer the reader to the

chapter on Natal.--Author.

What the ultimate effect of our policy will be, when the leaven has

leavened the whole, when the floodgates are lifted, and this vast native

population (which, contrary to all ordinary precedent, does _not_

melt away before the sun of the white man’s power) is let loose in its

indolent thousands, unrestrained, save by the bonds of civilised law,

who can presume to say? But this is not for present consideration.

Subject to due precautions, the path of progress must of necessity be

followed, and the results of such following left in the balancing hands

of Fate and the future.