We came to another household of mixed Germans and Dutch, where we received exactly the same answers to our enquiries. Farming answered very well,—but cattle or sheep were the articles which paid. A man should only grow what corn he wanted for himself and his stock. A farmer with 6,000 acres, which is the ordinary size of a farm, should not plough at the most above 40 acres,—just the patches of land round his house. For simply agricultural purposes 6,000 acres would of course be unavailable. The farming capitalists in England who single-handed plough 6,000 acres might probably be counted on the ten fingers. In Natal,—and in South Africa generally,—when a farm is spoken of an area is signified large enough for pastoral purposes. This may be all very well for the individual farmer, but it is not good for a new country, such as are the greater number of our Colonies. In Australia the new coming small farmer can purchase land over the heads of the pastoral Squatters who are only tenants of the land under Government. But in South Africa the fee of the land has unfortunately been given away.
On many of these farms we found that Zulus had “locations.” A small number,—perhaps four or five families,—had been allowed to make a kraal,—or native village,—on condition that the men would work for wages. The arrangement is not kept in any very strict way, but is felt to be convenient by farmers who have not an antipathy to the Zulus. The men will work, unless they are particularly anxious just then to be idle;—which is, I think, as much as can be expected from them just at present. Throughout this country there are other “locations”—very much larger in extent of land and numerously inhabited,—on which the Natives reside by their own right, the use of the soil having been given to them by the Government.
At Greyton the capital of the district I met an English farmer, a gentleman living at a little distance whose residence and station I did not see, and found him boiling over with grievances. He found me walking about the little town at dawn, and took out of his pocket a long letter of complaint, addressed to some one in authority, which he insisted on reading to me. It was a general accusation against the Zulus and all those who had the management of the Zulus. He was able to do nothing because of the injuries which the vagabond Natives inflicted upon him. He would not have had a Zulu near him if he could have helped it. I could not but wish that he might be deserted by Zulus altogether for a year,—so that he might have to catch his own horse, and kill his own sheep, and clean his own top boots—in which he was dressed when he walked about the streets of Greyton that early morning reading to my unwilling ears his long letter of complaint.
At his camp in the neighbourhood of Greyton I bade adieu to the Governor and his companions and went back to Pieter Maritzburg by the mail cart. I had quite convinced myself that the people whom I had seen during my little tour had done well in settling themselves in Natal, and had prospered as Colonists, in spite of the dog tax and the wickedness of the Zulus to the unfortunate owner of the top boots.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE ZULUS.
Upon entering Natal we exchange the Kafir for the Zulu,—who conceives himself to be a very superior sort of man—not as being equal to the white man whom he reverences, but as being greatly above the other black races around him. And yet he is not a man of ancient blood, or of long established supremacy. In the early part of this century,—beyond which I take it Zulu history goeth not,—there was a certain chief of the Zulus whom we have spoken of as King Chaka. To spell the name aright there should be a T before the C, and an accent to mark the peculiar sound in the Kafir language which is called a click. To the uninstructed English ear Chaka will be intelligible and sufficient. He was King of the Zulus, but the tribe was not mighty before his time. He was a great warrior and was brave enough and gradually strong enough to “eat up” all the tribes around him; and then, according to Kafir fashion, the tribes so eaten amalgamated themselves with the eaters, and the Zulus became a great people. But Chaka was a bloody tyrant and if the stories told be true was nearly as great an eater of his own people as of his enemies. In his early days the territory which we now call Natal was not inhabited by Zulus but by tribes which fell under his wrath, and which he either exterminated or assimilated,—which at any rate he “ate up.” Then the Zulus flocked into the land, and hence the native population became a Zulu people. But Zulu-land proper, with which we Britons have no concern and where the Zulus live under an independent king of their own, is to the North of Natal, lying between the Colony and the Portuguese possession called Delagoa Bay.
It may be as well to say here a few words about the Zulus on their own land. I did not visit their country and am not therefore entitled to say much, but from what I learned I have no doubt that had I visited the nation I should have been received with all courtesy at the Court of his dreaded Majesty King Cetywayo,—who at this moment, January, 1878, is I fear our enemy. The spelling of this name has become settled, but Cetch-way-o is the pronunciation which shews the speaker to be well up in his Zulu. King Chaka, who made all the conquests, was murdered by his brother Dingaan[16] who then reigned in his stead. Dingaan did not add much territory to the territories of his tribe as Chaka had done, but he made himself known and probably respected among his Zulu subjects by those horrible butcheries of the Dutch pioneers of which I have spoken in my chapter on the early history of the Colony. The name of Dingaan then became dreadful through the land. It was not only that he butchered the Dutch, but that he maintained his authority and the dread of his name by the indiscriminate slaughter of his own people. If the stories told be true, he was of all South African Savages the most powerful and the most savage. But as far as I can learn English missionaries were safe in Zulu-land even in Dingaan’s time.
Then Dingaan was murdered and his brother Panda became Chief. Neither Chaka or Dingaan left sons, and there is extant a horrible story to the effect that they had their children killed as soon as born, thinking that a living son would be the most natural enemy to a reigning father. Panda was allowed to live and reign, and seems to have been a fat do-nothing good-natured sort of King,—for a Zulu. He died some years since,—in his bed if he had one,—and now his son Cetywayo reigns in his stead.
Cetywayo has certainly a bad reputation generally, though he was till quite lately supposed to be favourable to the English as opposed to the Dutch. When dealing with the troubles of the Transvaal I shall have to say something of him in that respect. He has probably been the indirect cause of the annexation of that country. In Natal there are two opinions about the Zulu monarch. As the white man generally dislikes the black races by whom he is surrounded and troubled in South Africa,—not averse by any means to the individual with whom he comes in immediate contact, but despising and almost hating the people,—Cetywayo and his subjects are as a rule evil spoken of among the Europeans of the adjacent Colony. He is accused of murdering his people right and left according to his caprices. That is the charge brought against him. But it is acknowledged that he does not murder white people, and I am not at all sure that there is any conclusive evidence of his cruelty to the blacks. He has his white friends as I have said, and although they probably go a little too far in whitewashing him, I am inclined to believe them when they assert that the spirit of European clemency and abhorrence from bloodshed has worked its way even into the Zulu Court and produced a respect for life which was unknown in the days of Chaka and Dingaan. It is no doubt the case that some of the missionaries who had been settled in Zulu-land have in the year that is last past,—1877,—left the country as though in a panic. I presume that the missionaries have gone because two or three of their converts were murdered. Two or three certainly have been murdered, but I doubt whether it was done by order of the Chief. The converts have as a rule been safe,—as have the missionaries,—not from any love borne to them by Cetywayo, but because Cetywayo has thought them to be protected by English influence. Cetywayo has hitherto been quite alive to the expediency of maintaining peace with his white neighbours in Natal, though he could afford to despise his Dutch neighbours in the Transvaal. It has yet to be seen whether we shall be able to settle questions as to a line of demarcation between himself and us in the Transvaal without an appeal to force.
When I was at Pieter Maritzburg a young lady who was much interested in the welfare of the Zulus and who had perhaps a stronger belief in the virtues of the black people than in the justice of the white, read to me a diary which had just been made by a Zulu who had travelled from Natal into Zulu-land to see Cetywayo, and had returned not only in safety but with glowing accounts of the King’s good conduct to him. The diary was in the Zulu language and my young friend, if I may call her so, shewed her perfect mastery over that and her mother tongue by the way in which she translated it for me. That the diary was an excellent literary production, and that it was written by the Zulu in an extremely good running hand, containing the narrative of his journey from day to day in a manner quite as interesting as many published English journals, are certainly facts. How far it was true may be a matter of doubt. The lady and her family believed it entirely,—and they knew the man well. The bulk of the white inhabitants of Pieter Maritzburg would probably not have believed a word of it. I believed most of it, every now and then arousing the gentle wrath of the fair reader by casting a doubt upon certain details. The writer of the journal was present, however, answering questions as they were asked; and, as he understood and spoke English, my doubts could only be expressed when he was out of the room. “There is a touch of romance there,” I would say when he had left us alone. “Wasn’t that put in specially for you and your father?” I asked as to another passage. But she was strong in support of her Zulu, and made me feel that I should like to have such an advocate if ever suspected myself.