The twilight, sadly short now, was fast coming on, and all the black people were anxious to get back to their homes. Already the crowd of spectators had melted away like magic, streaming down the green hillsides by many a different track: only a remnant of the body-guard lingered to escort the performers home. As they passed the corner of the verandah where the tea-table was set, I fancied they glanced wistfully at the cakes; so I rather timidly handed a substantial biscuit, as big as a saucer, to the huge Nozinyanga, who graciously accepted it as joyfully as a child would. Another little black hand was thrust out directly, and yet another, and so the end was that the tea-tables were cleared, then and there, of all the eatables; and it was not until every dish was empty that the group moved on, raising a parting cry of “Inkosa casa!” and a sort of cheer or attempt at a cheer. They were so unfeignedly delighted with this sudden “happy thought” about the cakes and biscuits that it was quite a pleasure to see them, so good-humored and docile, moving off the moment they saw I really had exhausted my store, with pretty gestures of gratitude and thanks. We had to content ourselves with bread and butter with our second cups of tea, but we were so tired and thirsty, and so glad of a little rest and quiet, that I don’t think we missed the cakes.
As we sat there enjoying the last lovely gleams of daylight and chatting over the strange, weird scene, we could just hear the distant song of the escort as they took the tired priestesses home, and we all fell to talking of the custom when it was in all its savage force. Many of the friends present had seen or heard terrible instances of the wholesale massacre which would have followed just such an exhibition as this had it been in earnest. But I will repeat for you some of the less ghastly stories. One shall be modern and one ancient—as ancient as half a century ago, which is ancient for modern tradition. The modern one is the tamest, so it shall come first.
Before the law was passed making it wrong to consult these Izinyanga or witch-doctors a servant belonging to one of the English settlers lost his savings, some three or four pounds. He suspected one of his fellow-servants of being the thief, summoned the Izinyanga, and requested his master to “assist” at the ceremony. All the other servants were bidden to assemble themselves, and to do exactly what the witch-finder bade them. She had them seated in a row in front of her, and ordered them, one and all, to bare their throats and chests, for, you must remember, they were clothed as the law obliges them to be in the towns—in a shirt and knickerbockers. This they did, the guilty one with much trepidation, you may be sure, and she fixed her eyes on that little hollow in the neck where the throat joins the body, watching carefully the accelerated pulsation: “It is thou: no, it is not. It must then be you;” and so on, dodging about, pointing first to one, and then rapidly wheeling round to fix on another, until the wretched criminal was so nervous that when she made one of her sudden descents upon him, guided by the bewraying pulse, which fluttered and throbbed with anxiety and terror, he was fain to throw up his hands and confess, praying for mercy. In this case the Izinyanga was merely a shrewd, observant woman with a strong spice of the detective in her; but they are generally regarded not only as sorceresses, whose superior incantations can discover and bring to light the machinations of the ordinary witch, but as priestesses of a dark and obscure faith.
The other instance of their discernment we talked of happened some fifty years ago, when Chaka the Terrible was king of the Zulus. The political power of these Izinyanga had then reached a great height in Zululand, and they were in the habit of denouncing as witches—or rather wizards—one after the other of the king’s ministers and chieftains. It was difficult to put a stop to these wholesale murders, for the sympathy of the people was always on the side of the witch-finders, cruel though they were. At last the king thought of an expedient. He killed a bullock, and with his own hands smeared its blood over the royal hut in the dead of night. Next day he summoned a council, and announced that some one had been guilty of high treason in defiling the king’s hut with blood, and that, too, when it stood, apparently secure from outrage, in the very middle of the kraal. What was to be done? The Izinyanga were summoned, and commanded, on pain of death, to declare who was the criminal. This they were quite ready to do, and named without hesitation one after another the great inkosi who sat trembling around. But instead of dooming the wretched victim to death, the dénouement closely resembled that of the famous elegy: “The dog it was that died.” In other words, the witch-finders who named an inkosi heard to their astonishment that they were to be executed and the denounced victim kept alive. This went on for some time, until one, cleverer than the rest, and yet afraid of committing himself too much, rose up and said oracularly, “I smell the heavens above.” Chaka took this as a compliment, as well as a guess in the right direction, ordered all the remaining Izinyanga to be slain on the spot, and appointed the fortunate oracle to be his one and only witch-finder for ever after.
Chaka’s name will be remembered for many and many a day in Zululand and the provinces which border it by both black and white. In the first decade of this century, when Napoleon was mapping out Europe afresh with the bayonet for a stylus, and we were pouring out blood and money like water to check him here and there—at that very time Ranpehera in New Zealand and Chaka in Zululand were playing a precisely similar game. Here, Chaka had a wider field for his Alexander-like rage for conquest, and he and his wild warriors dashed over the land like a mountain-stream. No place was safe from him, and he was the terror of the unhappy first settlers. Even now his name brings a sense of uneasiness with it, for it is still a spell to rouse the warrior-spirit, which only sleeps in the breasts of his wild subjects across the border.
PART VIII.
Maritzburg, May 10, 1876
No, I will not begin about the weather this time. It is a great temptation to do so, because this is the commencement of the winter, and it is upon the strength of the coming four months that the reputation of Natal, as possessing the finest climate in the world, is built. Before I came here meteorologists used to tell me that the “average” temperature of Maritzburg was so and so, mentioning something very equable and pleasant; but then, you see, there is this little difference between weather-theories and the practice of the weather itself: it is sadly apt to rush into extremes, and degrees of heat and cold are very different when totted up and neatly spread over many weeks, from the same thing bolted in lumps. Then you don’t catch cold on paper, nor live in doubt whether to have a fire or open windows and doors. To keep at all on a level with the thermometer here, one needs to dress three or four times a day; and it is quite on the cards that a muslin gown and sealskin jacket may both be pleasant wear on the same day. We have all got colds, and, what is worse, we have all had colds more or less badly for some time past; and I hear that everybody else has them too. Of course, this news is an immense consolation, else why should it invariably be mentioned as a compensation for one’s own paroxysms of sneezing and coughing?
It is certainly cooler, at times quite cold, but the sudden spasms of fierce hot winds and the blazing sun during the midday hours appear the more withering and scorching for the contrast with the lower temperature of morning and evening. Still, we all keep saying (I yet protest against the formula, but I’ve no doubt I shall come round presently and join heart and soul in it), “Natal has the finest climate in the world,” although we have to go about like the man in the fable, and either wrap our cloaks tightly around us or throw them wide open to breathe. But there! I said I would not go off into a meteorological report, and I will not be beguiled by the attractions of a grievance—for there is no such satisfactory grievance as weather—into breaking so good a resolution. Rather let me graft upon this monotonous weather-grumble a laugh at the expense of poor Zulu Jack, whom I found the other morning in a state of nervous anxiety over the butter, which steadily refused to be spread on a slice of bread for little G—— ’s consumption. “Have you such a thing as a charm about you, lady-chief?” Jack demanded in fluent Zulu; “for this butter is assuredly bewitched. Last night I could make slices of buttered bread quite easily: this morning, behold it!” and he exhibited his ill-used slice of bread, with obstinate and isolated dabs of butter sticking about it. So, you see, it must be cooler; and so it is, I acknowledge, except of a morning on which a hot wind sets in before sunrise.