When he was yet a lad,--now some seventeen years ago,--fortune
took him to South Africa. There he was thrown in with men who, for
thirty or forty years, had been intimately acquainted with the Zulu
people, with their history, their heroes, and their customs. From
these he heard many tales and traditions, some of which, perhaps, are
rarely told nowadays, and in time to come may cease to be told
altogether. Then the Zulus were still a nation; now that nation has
been destroyed, and the chief aim of its white rulers is to root out
the warlike spirit for which it was remarkable, and to replace it by a
spirit of peaceful progress. The Zulu military organisation, perhaps
the most wonderful that the world has seen, is already a thing of the
past; it perished at Ulundi. It was Chaka who invented that
organisation, building it up from the smallest beginnings. When he
appeared at the commencement of this century, it was as the ruler of a
single small tribe; when he fell, in the year 1828, beneath the
assegais of his brothers, Umhlangana and Dingaan, and of his servant,
Mopo or Umbopo, as he is called also, all south-eastern Africa was at
his feet, and in his march to power he had slaughtered more than a
million human beings. An attempt has been made in these pages to set
out the true character of this colossal genius and most evil man,--a
Napoleon and a Tiberiius in one,--and also that of his brother and
successor, Dingaan, so no more need be said of them here.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25