Among these people, the foot assumes its proper form and dimensions. The toes are not pinched together by shoes or boots, and reduced to the helpless state too common in this country. The foot is, like that of an ancient statue, wide and full across the toes, each of which has its separate function just as have the fingers of the hand, and each of which is equally capable of performing that function. Therefore the gait of a Kaffir is perfection itself. He has not had his foot lifted behind and depressed in front by high-heeled boots, nor the play of the instep checked by leathern bonds. The wonderful arch of the foot—one of the most astonishing pieces of mechanism that the world affords—can perform its office unrestrained, and every little bone, muscle and tendon plays its own part, and none other.
The constant activity of the Kaffirs, conjoined to their temperate mode of life, keeps them in perfect health, and guards them against many evils which befall the civilized man. They are free from many of the minor ailments incident to high civilization, and which, trifling as they may be singly, detract greatly in the aggregate from the happiness of life. Moreover, their state of health enables them to survive injuries which would be almost instantly fatal to any ordinary civilized European. That this comparative immunity is owing to the mode of life and not to the color of the skin is a well-known fact, Europeans being, when in thorough good health, even more enduring than their dark-skinned companions. A remarkable instance of this fact occurred during the bloody struggle between the Dutch colonists and Dingan’s forces in 1837. The Kaffirs treacherously assaulted the unsuspecting Dutchmen, and then invaded their villages, spearing all the inhabitants and destroying the habitations. Near the Blue Krantz River was a heap of dead, among whom were found two young girls, who still showed signs of life. One had received nineteen stabs with the assagai, and the other twenty-one. They were removed from the corpses, and survived their dreadful wounds, reaching womanhood, though both crippled for life.
On one occasion, while I was conversing with Captain Burton, and alluding to the numerous wounds which he had received, and the little effect which they had upon him, he said that when the human frame was brought, by constant exercise and simple diet, into a state of perfect health, mere flesh wounds were scarcely noticed, the cut closing almost as easily as if it had been made in India-rubber. It may also be familiar to my readers, that when in this country men are carefully trained for any physical exertion, whether it be pedestrianism, gymnastics, rowing, or the prize-ring, they receive with indifference injuries which would have prostrated them a few months previously, and recover from them with wonderful rapidity.
The young Kaffir women are quite as remarkable for the beauty of their form as are the men, and the very trifling dress which they wear serves to show off their figures to the best advantage. Some of the young Kaffir girls are, in point of form, so perfect that they would have satisfied even the fastidious taste of the classical sculptor. There is, however, in them the same tendency to high shoulders which has already been mentioned, and in some cases the shoulders are set almost squarely across the body. In most instances, however, the shoulders have the proper droop, while the whole of the bust is an absolute model of perfection—rounded, firm, and yet lithe as the body of a panther.
There is now before me a large collection of photographs, representing Kaffir girls of various ages, and, in spite of the invariable stiffness of photographic portraits, they exhibit forms which might serve as models for any sculptor. If they could only have been photographed while engaged in their ordinary pursuits, the result would have been most artistic, but the very knowledge that they were not to move hand or foot has occasioned them to assume attitudes quite at variance with the graceful unconsciousness of their ordinary gestures.
Besides the stiffness which has already been mentioned, there are several points which make a really good photographic portrait almost an impossibility. In the first place, the sunlight is so brilliant that the shadows become developed into black patches, and the high lights into splashes of white without the least secondary shading. The photographer of Kaffir life cannot put his models into a glass room cunningly furnished with curtains and tinted glass. He must take the camera into the villages, photograph the inhabitants as they stand or sit in the open air, and make a darkened hut act as a developing-tent.
Taking the portrait properly is a matter of extreme difficulty. The Kaffirs will rub themselves with grease, and the more they shine the better they are dressed. Now, as every photographer knows, nothing is more perplexing than a rounded and polished surface in the full rays of the sunbeams; and if it were only possible to rub the grease from the dark bodies, and deprive them of their gloss, the photographer would have a better chance of success. But the Kaffir ladies, old and young alike, think it a point of honor to be dressed in their very best when their portraits are taken, and will insist upon bedizening themselves exactly in the way which is most destructive to photography. They take fresh grease, and rub their bodies until they shine like a well-polished boot; they indue every necklace, girdle, bracelet, or other ornament that they can muster, and not until they are satisfied with their personal appearance will they present themselves to the artist. Even when they have done so, they are restless, inquisitive, and rather nervous, and in all probability will move their heads just as the cap of the lens is removed, or will take fright and run away altogether. In the case of the two girls represented in the [illustration], on page 25, the photographer has been singularly fortunate. Both the girls belonged to the tribe commanded by the well-known chief Goza, whose [portrait] will be given on a subsequent page. The girls are clad in their ordinary costume of every-day life, and in fact, when their portraits were taken, were acting as housemaids in the house of an European settler.
Unfortunately, this singular beauty of form is very transient; and when a girl has attained to the age at which an English girl is in her full perfection, the Kaffir girl has begun to age, and her firm, lithe, and graceful form has become flabby and shapeless. In the series of portraits which has been mentioned, this gradual deterioration of form is curiously evident; and in one example, which represents a row of girls sitting under the shade of a hut, young girls just twenty years of age look like women of forty.
