The task of the fields is committed to the women and young girls, the men thinking such duties beneath them. In order to keep off the birds from the newly sprouted corn blades, or from the just ripening grain, a very ingenious device is employed. A great number of tall, slender posts are stuck at intervals all over the piece of land, and strings made of bark are led from pole to pole, all the ends being brought to the top of the watch-tower, where they are firmly tied. As soon as a flock of birds alight on the field, the girl in charge of the tower pulls the strings violently, which sets them all vibrating up and down, and so the birds are frightened, and fly away to another spot. A system almost identical with this is employed both in the Chinese and Japanese empires, and the complicated arrangement of poles and strings, and the central watch-tower, is a favorite subject for illustration in the rude but graphic prints which both nations produce with such fertility.
The enemies of the cornfield are innumerable. There are, in the first place, hosts of winged foes, little birds and insects, which cannot be prohibited from entering, and can only be driven away when they have entered. Then there are certain members of the monkey tribes, notably the baboons, or chacmas, which care very little more for a fence than do the birds, and which, if they find climbing the fence too troublesome, can generally insinuate themselves through its interstices. This cunning and active animal is at times too clever even for the Kaffir, and will succeed in stealing unobserved into his garden, and carrying off the choicest of the crops. Whatever a man will eat a chacma will eat, and the creature knows as well as the man when the crops are in the best order. Whether the garden contain maize, millet, pumpkins, sweet reed, or fruits, the chacma is sure to select the best; and even when the animals are detected, and chased out of the garden, it is very annoying to the proprietor to see them go off with a quantity of spoil, besides the amount which they have eaten.
The ordinary food of the chacma is a plant called Babiana, from the use which the baboons make of it. It is a subterranean root, which has the property of being always full of watery juice in the dryest weather, so that it is of incalculable value to travellers who have not a large supply of water with them, or who find that the regular fountains are dried up. Many Kaffirs keep tame chacmas which they have captured when very young, and which have scarcely seen any of their kind. These animals are very useful to the Kaffirs, for, if they come upon a plant or a fruit which they do not know, they offer it to the baboon; and if he eats it, they know that it is suitable for human consumption.
On their journeys the same animal is very useful in discovering water, or, at all events, the babiana roots, which supply a modicum of moisture to the system, and serve to support life until water is reached. Under these circumstances, the baboon takes the lead of the party, being attached to a long rope, and allowed to run about as it likes. When it comes to a root of babiana, it is held back until the precious vegetable can be taken entire out of the ground, but, in order to stimulate the animal to further exertions, it is allowed to eat a root now and then. The search for water is conducted in a similar manner. The wretched baboon is intentionally kept without drink until it is half mad with thirst, and is then led by a cord as before mentioned. It proceeds with great caution, standing occasionally on its hind legs to sniff the breeze, and looking at and smelling every tuft of grass. By what signs the animal is guided no one can even conjecture; but if water is in the neighborhood the baboon is sure to find it. So, although this animal is an inveterate foe of the field and garden, it is not without its uses to man when its energies are rightly directed.
If the gardens or fields should happen to be near the river side, there is no worse foe for them than the hippopotamus, which is only too glad to exchange its ordinary food for the rich banquet which it finds in cultivated grounds. If a single hippopotamus should once succeed in getting into a garden, a terrible destruction to the crop takes place. In the first place, the animal can consume an almost illimitable amount of green food: and when it gets among such dainties as cornfields and pumpkin patches, it indulges its appetite inordinately. Moreover, it damages more than it eats, as its broad feet and short thick legs trample their way through the crops. The track of any large animal would be injurious to a standing crop, but that of the hippopotamus is doubly so, because the legs of either side are so wide apart that the animal makes a double track, one being made with the feet of the right side, and the other with those of the left.
Against these heavy and voracious foes, a fence would be of little avail, as the hippopotamus could force its way through the barrier without injury, thanks to its thick hide. The owner of the field therefore encloses it within a tolerably deep ditch, and furthermore defends the ditch by pointed stakes: so that, if a hippopotamus did happen to fall into the trench, it would never come out again alive. A similar defence is sometimes made against the inroads of the elephants. Those animals do not often take it into their heads to attack a garden in the vicinity of human habitations; but when they do so, it is hardly possible to stop them, except by such an obstacle as a ditch. Even the ordinary protection of a fence and the vicinity of human habitations is worthless, when a number of elephants choose to make an inroad upon some field; and, unless the whole population turns out of the kraal and uses all means at their command, the animals will carry out their plans. The elephant always chooses the night for his marauding expeditions, so that the defenders of the crops have double disadvantages to contend against. One weapon which they use against the elephant is a very singular one. They have an idea that the animal is terrified at the shrill cry of an infant, and as soon as elephants approach a kraal, all the children are whipped, in hopes that the elephants may be dismayed at the universal clamor, and leave the spot.
Antelopes of various kinds are exceedingly fond of the young corn blades, and, if the field be without a fence, are sure to come in numbers, and nibble every green shoot down to the very ground. Near the bush the buffalo is scarcely less injurious, and more dangerous to meddle with; and even the porcupine is capable of working much damage. The wild swine, however, are perhaps the worst, because the most constant invaders, of the garden. Even a fence is useless against them, unless it be perfect throughout its length, for the pigs can force themselves through a wonderfully small aperture, owing to their wedge-shaped head, while their thick and tough skins enable them to push their way through thorns and spikes without suffering any damage.
The “pigs,” as the wild swine are popularly called, always come from the bush; and when several kraals are built near a bush, the chiefs of each kraal agree to make a fence from one to the other, so as to shut out the pigs from all the cultivated land. This fence is a very useful edifice, but, at the same time, has a very ludicrous aspect to an European. The reader has already been told that the Kaffir cannot draw a straight line, much less build a straight fence; and the consequence is, that the builders continually find that the fence is assuming the form of a segment of a circle in one direction, and then try to correct the error by making a segment of a circle in the opposite direction, thus making the fence very much larger than is necessary, and giving themselves a vast amount of needless trouble.
As to the winged enemies of the garden, many modes of killing them or driving them away are employed. One method for frightening birds has already been described, and is tolerably useful when the corn is young and green; but when it is ripe, the birds are much too busy to be deterred by such flimsy devices, and continue to eat the corn in spite of the shaking strings. Under such circumstances, war is declared against the birds, and a number of Kaffirs surround the enclosure, each being furnished with a number of knob-kerries. A stone is then flung into the corn for the purpose of startling the birds, and as they rise in a dense flock, a shower of kerries is rained upon them from every side. As every missile is sure to go into the flock, and as each Kaffir contrives to hurl four or five before the birds can get out of range, it may be imagined that the slaughter is very great. Tchaka, who was not above directing the minutiæ of domestic life, as well as of leading armies, subsidizing nations, and legislating for an empire, ordered that the birds should be continually attacked throughout his dominions; and, though he did not succeed in killing them all, yet he thinned their numbers so greatly, that during the latter years of his life the graminivorous birds had become scarce instead of invading the fields in vast flocks.
Locusts, the worst of the husbandman’s enemies, could not be extirpated, and, indeed, the task of even thinning their numbers appeared impracticable. The only plan that seems to have the least success is that of burning a large heap of grass, sticks, and leaves well to windward of the fields, as soon as the locusts are seen in the distance. These insects always fly with the wind, and when they find a tract of country covered with smoke, they would naturally pass on until they found a spot which was not defiled with smoke, and on which they might settle. It is said that locusts were not known in the Zulu territories until 1829, and that they were sent by the supernatural power of Sotshangana, a chief in the Delagoa district, whom Tchaka attacked, and by whom the Zulu warriors were defeated, as has already been mentioned on [page 124]. The whole story was told to Mr. Shooter, who narrates it in the following words:—