Sometimes the Kaffir makes his snuff box out of the horn of a young ox; but he will occasionally go to the trouble of cutting it out of the horn of a rhinoceros. Such a box is a valuable one, for the bone of the rhinoceros is solid, and therefore the hollow must be made by sheer labor, whereas that of the ox is already hollow, and only needs to be polished. Moreover, it is not so easy to procure the horn of a rhinoceros as that of an ox, inasmuch as the former is a powerful and dangerous animal, and can only be obtained at the risk of life, or by the laborious plan of digging a pitfall.
There is one form of snuff box which is, as far as I know, peculiar to the tribes of Southern Africa, both in shape and material. The Kaffir begins by making a clay model of some animal, and putting it in the sun to dry. He is very expert at this art, and, as a general rule, can imitate the various animals with such truth that they can be immediately recognized. Of course he has but little delicacy, and does not aim at any artistic effect; but he is thoroughly acquainted with the salient points of the animal which he is modelling, and renders them with a force that frequently passes into rather ludicrous exaggeration.
The next process is a very singular one. When a cow is killed, the Kaffir removes the hide, and lays it on the ground with the hair downward. With the sharp blade of his assagai he then scrapes the interior of the hide, so as to clean off the coagulated blood which adheres to it, and collects it all in one place. With this blood he mixes some powdered earth, and works the blood and the powder into a paste. Of course a small quantity of animal fibre is scraped from the hide and mixed with the paste, and aids to bind it more closely together. The paste being ready, the Kaffir rubs it over the clay model, taking care to lay it on of a uniform thickness. A few minutes in the burning sunshine suffices to harden it tolerably, and then a second coat is added. The Kaffir repeats this process until he has obtained a coating about the twelfth of an inch in thickness. Just before it has become quite hard, he takes his needle or a very finely pointed assagai, and raises a kind of coarse nap on the surface, so as to bear a rude resemblance to hair. When it is quite dry, the Kaffir cuts a round hole in the top of the head, and with his needle aided by sundry implements made of thorns, picks out the whole of the clay model, leaving only the dry coating of paste. By this time the plastic paste has hardened into a peculiar consistency. It is very heavy in proportion to its bulk, partly on account of the earthy matter incorporated with it, and partly on account of its extremely compact nature. It is wonderfully strong, resisting considerable violence without suffering any damage. It is so hard that contact with sharp stones, spear heads, or a knife blade is perfectly innocuous, and so elastic, that if it were dropped from the clouds upon the earth, it would scarcely sustain any injury.
My own specimen represents an elephant, the leathern thong by which the plug is retained being ingeniously contrived to play the part of the proboscis. But the Kaffirs are singularly ingenious in their manufacture of these curious snuff boxes, and imitate the form of almost every animal in their own country. The ox and the elephant are their favorite models: but they will sometimes make a snuff box in the form of a rhinoceros; and the very best specimen that I have as yet seen was in the shape of a hartebeest, the peculiar recurved horns, and shape of the head, being rendered with wonderful truth.
Modelling must naturally imply a mind with some artistic powers; and it is evident that any one who can form in clay a recognizable model of any object, no matter how rude it may be, has within him some modicum of the sculptor’s art. This implies a portion of the draughtsman’s art also, because in the mind of the modeller there must exist a tolerably accurate conception of the various outlines that bound the object which he models. He can also carve very respectably in wood; and, as we have seen—when we came to the question of a Kaffir’s food and how he eats it—he can carve his spoons into very artistic forms, and sometimes to the shape of certain objects, whether artificial or natural. There is now before me an admirably executed model of the head of a buffalo, carved by a Kaffir out of a rhinoceros horn, the peculiar sweep and curve of the buffalo’s enormous horn being given with a truth and freedom that are really wonderful.
Yet it is a most remarkable fact that a Kaffir, as a general rule, is wholly incapable of understanding a drawing that includes perspective. An ordinary outline he can understand well enough, and will recognize a sketch of an animal, a house, or a man, and will sometimes succeed in identifying the individual who is represented. Yet even this amount of artistic recognition is by no means universal; and a Kaffir, on being shown a well-executed portrait of a man, has been known to assert that it was a lion.
But when perspective is included, the Kaffir is wholly at a loss to comprehend it. One of my friends, who was travelling in South Africa, halted at a well-known spot, and while there received a copy of an illustrated newspaper, in which was an engraving of the identical spot. He was delighted at the opportunity, and called the Kaffirs to come and look at the print. Not one of them could form the slightest conception of its meaning, although, by a curious coincidence, a wagon had been represented in exactly the situation which was occupied by that in which they were travelling. In vain did he explain the print. Here was the wagon—there was that clump of trees—there was that flat-topped hill—down in that direction ran that ravine—and so forth. They listened very attentively, and then began to laugh, thinking that he was joking with them. The wagon, which happened to be in the foreground, they recognized, but the landscape they ignored. “That clump of trees,” said they, “is more than a mile distant; how can it be on this flat piece of paper?” To their minds the argument was ended, and there was no room for further discussion.
I have another snuff box, which is remarkable as being a combination of two arts; namely, modelling and bead work. The author of this composition does not seem to have been a man of original genius, or to have possessed any confidence in his power of modelling. Instead of making a clay model of some animal, he has contented himself with imitating a gourd, one of the easiest tasks that a child of four years old could perform. There is nothing to do but to make a ball of clay, for the body of the box, and fix to it a small cylinder of clay for the neck. The maker of this snuff box has been scarcely more successful in the ornamental cover than in the box itself. With great labor he has woven an envelope made of beads, and up to a certain point has been successful. He has evidently possessed beads of several sizes, and has disposed them with some ingenuity. The larger are made into the cover for the neck of the box, a number of the very largest beads being reserved to mark the line where the neck is worked into the body of the bottle. All the beads are strung upon threads made of sinews, and are managed so ingeniously that a kind of close network is formed, which fits almost tightly to the box. But the maker has committed a slight error in his measurements, and the consequence is that, although the cover fits closely over the greater part of the box, it forms several ungainly wrinkles here and there; the maker having forgotten that, owing to the globular shape of the box, the diameter of the bead envelope ought to have been contracted with each row of beads.
The colors of the beads are only three—namely, chalk-white, garnet, and blue; the two latter being translucent. The groundwork is formed of the opaque white beads, while those of the other two colors are disposed in bands running in a slightly spiral direction.
There is now before me a most remarkable snuff box, or “iquaka,” as the Kaffirs call it, which perplexed me exceedingly. The form is that of a South African gourd, and it is furnished with a leathern thong, after the pure African fashion. But the carving with which it is almost entirely covered never was designed by a Kaffir artist. The upper portion is cut so as to resemble the well-known concentric ivory balls which the Chinese cut with such infinite labor, and a similar pattern decorates the base. But the body of the gourd is covered with outline carvings, one of which represents a peacock, a bird which does not belong to Kaffirland, and the rest of which are very fair representations of the rose, thistle, and shamrock. The peacock is really well drawn, the contrast between the close plumage of the body and the loose, discomposed feathers of the train being very boldly marked; while the attitude of the bird, as it stands on a branch, with reverted head, is very natural. (See [page 167].) Major Ross King, to whose collection it belongs, tells me that if he had not seen it taken from the body of a slain warrior, he could hardly have believed that it came from Southern Africa. He thinks that it must have been carved by a partially civilized Hottentot, or Kaffir of exceptional intelligence, and that the design must have been copied from some English models, or have been furnished by an Englishman to the Kaffir, who afterward transferred it to the gourd.