Yankee Girls in Zulu Land

by Louise Vescelius Sheldon

The late Bishop Colenso, famous for his disputations on the Old Testament and also as an arithmetician, was greatly beloved among the Zulus. They went to the bishop as to a friend for counsel in political matters, when they would not listen to the governor or any British official. His body when carried to the grave was followed by thousands of his savage friends. Many of them had never been in a town before, but came to attend the funeral of the teacher they loved so well. The sight of the half-naked and wild-looking mourners was a very striking one. We started early one pleasant Sabbath morning for Edendale, a missionary station about ten miles from Maritzberg. As we were sitting under the trees enjoying the lovely day, there arose from the chapel near by a sound of voices singing one of Sankey’s sacred songs in the Kafir language.

It seemed as if we were now hearing it sung with all its true pathos for the first time. The voices of the women, pitched in a very high key, wailed it out on the air, whilst the men’s voices rolled out like the swell of a rich but subdued organ, in pedal tones, and all breathed now soft, now low, in singularly perfect time. We then strolled up to the church, and listened to a sermon by a missionary, which was translated by a black man at his side.

The houses, with farms attached, of these people, which we passed in walking through the settlement, were similar to the homes of the industrious civilised American negro. Very little encouragement on mission work could be gained from our colonial friends. Many cases were cited by them to prove that the religious beliefs of the white man do not throw any whiter rays of new light upon the barbaric mind than it already has. A chief of one of the tribes in the vicinity of Queenstown went to England, where he received a good education, and it was expected that he would return to his people with advanced, thoughts. But he returned to his blanket.

Then again we knew of a very exceptional case, where the son of a great chief went to England, and educated himself for missionary work, including the study of medicine, and returning to his own people did great good. This man, Thyo Soga, as he was called, married in Scotland a Scotch lady, whose sister we met on the fields. She said that there never was a finer gentleman, or a kinder husband, either black or white, ever born than Thyo Soga.

He built a church and mission school, and worked among his people until stricken down with consumption.

The Kafir is a perfectly healthy being until he puts on clothing and lives like the white man; then the dread disease consumption, clutches him and he succumbs. The well-laid-out reservation of the Presbyterian Mission at Grahamstown, with its neat houses kept by the natives, would seem to prove that they can be industrious and civilised, if reached after in the right spirit. Many of the Kafir churches that are met with through the country are self-supporting, and attended by neatly dressed and seemingly very devout congregations. There was much more social life in Maritzberg than in any other South African town. The ladies rode horseback a great deal, many of them being fine riders. The fashionable landau, dog cart, and basket carriage were constantly met with.

We occasionally visited the theatre, where a company of fine artists from across the seas were giving a season of English operas, as well mounted and sung as we had seen the same works in London. On command night, when the governor and his staff of officers would be present in the boxes, and the audience in full dress, the house presented a brilliant appearance. The theatre is not as fine a building as the one in Durban; the latter was built at a great expense, and was the finest in the country.

Many English, Scotch and Dutch residents in Maritzberg, combined with the military stationed there, made the town lively. It was a place in which we should have liked to have pitched our tent for a longer period of time. But after several months of life as intimate as we could expect to have in a foreign land, we turned our thoughts to our home in America, that could never be replaced in our hearts, and left Maritzberg for Durban. It was a bright spring day in September when, having packed our belongings and souvenirs, we stepped on board the steam tug at Durban which was to take us and several friends over the bar to the steamer. The sea and the weather seemed to have entered into a conspiracy to put on their most alluring dress to do honour to the departing strangers, and we steamed across the bar, the little steam launch puffing and smoking as who should say, “Aha! you’re going to America, aren’t you?—you’ve got some fine steamers there, haven’t you?—but look, see how busy I am, what a noise I make, and how recklessly I brave the dangers of the sand-bar, which those big fellows outside dare not tackle.”

All animate and inanimate nature seemed to smile on us and bid us God speed, and as we climbed up the ladder that led up the side of the good ship Asiatic, and emerged on her deck, we registered a vow to return some day to the land of sand and sunshine.