Part 18 (2/2)
As the last words die on his lips the air is filled with a deep, murmuring sound like distant thunder; it swells and rolls, and finally pa.s.ses away to give place to the noise of the rus.h.i.+ng of many feet. Over the brow of the hill dashes a compact body of warriors, running swiftly in lines of four, with their captain at their head, all clad in the same wild garb as the herald. Each bears a snow-white s.h.i.+eld carried on the slant, and above each warrior's head rises a grey heron's plume. These are the advance-guard, formed of the ”greys” or veteran troops. As they come into full view the s.h.i.+elds heave and fall, and then from every throat bursts the war-song of the Zulus. Pa.s.sing us swiftly, they take up their position in a double line on our right, and stand there solemnly chanting all the while. Another rush of feet, and another company flits over the hill towards us, but they bear coal-black s.h.i.+elds, and the drooping plumes are black as night; they fall into position next the firstcomers, and take up the chant. Now they come faster and faster, but all through the same gap in the bush. The red s.h.i.+elds, the dun s.h.i.+elds, the mottled s.h.i.+elds, the yellow s.h.i.+elds, follow each other in quick but regular succession, till at length there stands before us a body of some five hundred men, presenting, in their savage dress, their various s.h.i.+elds and flas.h.i.+ng spears, as wild a spectacle as it is possible to conceive.
But it is not our eyes only that are astonished, for from each of those five hundred throats there swells a chant never to be forgotten.
From company to company it pa.s.ses, that wild, characteristic song, so touching in its simple grandeur, so expressive in its deep, pathetic volume. The white men who listened had heard the song of choirs ringing down resounding aisles, they had been thrilled by the roll of oratorios pealing in melody, beautiful and complex, through the grandest of man's theatres, but never till now had they heard music of voices so weird, so soft and yet so savage, so simple and yet so all-expressive of the fiercest pa.s.sions known to the human heart. Hark! now it dies; lower and lower it sinks, it grows faint, despairing: ”Why does he not come, our chief, our lord? Why does he not welcome his singers? Ah! see, they come, the heralds of our lord! our chief is coming to cheer his praisers, our chief is coming to lead his warriors.” Again it rises and swells louder and louder, a song of victory and triumph. It rolls against the mountains, it beats against the ground: ”He is coming, he is here, attended by his chosen. Now we shall go forth to slay; now shall we taste of the battle.” Higher yet and higher, till at length the chief, Pagadi, swathed in war-garments of splendid furs, preceded by runners and accompanied by picked warriors, creeps slowly up. He is old and tottering, and of an unwieldy bulk. Two attendants support him, whilst a third bears his s.h.i.+eld, and a fourth (oh bathos!) a cane-bottomed chair. One moment the old man stands and surveys his warriors and listens to the familiar war-cry. As he stands, his face is lit with the light of battle, the light of remembered days. The tottering figure straightens itself, the feeble hand becomes strong once more. With a shout, the old man shakes off his supporters and grasps his s.h.i.+eld, and then, forgetting his weakness and his years, he rushes to his chieftain's place in the centre of his men. And as he comes the chant grows yet louder, the time yet faster, till it rises, and rings, and rolls, no longer a chant, but a war-cry, a paean of power. Pagadi stops and raises his hand, and the place is filled with a silence that may be felt. But not for long. The next moment five hundred s.h.i.+elds are tossed aloft, five hundred spears flash in the suns.h.i.+ne, and with a sudden roar, forth springs the royal salute, ”Bayete!”
The chief draws back and gives directions to his _indunas_, his thinkers, his wise ones, men distinguished from their fellows by the absence of s.h.i.+eld and plume; the _indunas_ pa.s.s on the orders to the captains, and at once the so-called dance begins. First they manoeuvre a little in absolute silence, and changing their position with wonderful precision and rapidity; but as their blood warms there comes a sound as of the hissing of ten thousand snakes, and they charge and charge again.
A pause, and the company of ”greys” on our right, throwing itself into open order, flits past us like so many vultures to precipitate itself with a wild, whistling cry on an opposing body which rushed to meet it. They join issue, they grapple; on them swoops another company, then another and another, until nothing is to be distinguished except a ma.s.s of wild faces heaving; of changing forms rolling and writhing, twisting and turning, and, to all appearances, killing and being killed, whilst the whole air is pervaded with a shrill, savage sibillation. It is not always the same cry; now it is the snorting of a troop of buffaloes, now the shriek of the eagle as he seizes his prey, anon the terrible cry of the ”night-prowler,” the lion, and now--more thrilling than all--the piercing wail of a woman. But whatever the cry, the cadence rises and falls in perfect time and unanimity; no two mix with one another so as to mar the effect of each.
Again the combatants draw back and pause, and then forth from the ranks springs a chosen warrior, and hurls himself on an imaginary foe. He darts. .h.i.ther and thither with wild activity, he bounds five feet into the air like a panther, he twists through the gra.s.s like a snake, and, finally, making a tremendous effort, he seems to slay his airy opponent, and sinks exhausted to the ground. The onlookers mark their approval or disapproval of the dancer's feats by the rising and falling of the strange whistling noise which, without the slightest apparent movement of face or lip, issues from each mouth. Warrior after warrior comes forth in turn from the ranks and does battle with his invisible foe, and receives his meed of applause. The last warrior to spring forward with a wild yell is the future chief, Pagadi's son and successor, our friend of yesterday. He stands, with his s.h.i.+eld in one hand and his lifted battle-axe--borne by him alone--in the other, looking proudly around, and rattling his lion-claw necklets, whilst from every side bursts forth a storm of sibillating applause, not from the soldiers only, but from the old men, women, and children. Through all his fierce pantomimic dance it continues, and when he has ended it redoubles, then dies away, but only to burst out again and again with unquenchable enthusiasm.
In order, probably, to give the warriors a brief breathing s.p.a.ce, another song is now set up, and it is marvellous the accuracy and knowledge of melody with which the parts are sung, like a glee of catch, the time being kept by a conductor, who rushes from rank to rank beating time with a wand. Yet it is hardly like chanting, rather like a weird, sobbing melody, with tones in it which range from the deepest ba.s.s to the shrillest treble. It ends in a long sigh, and then follows a scene, a tumult, a melee, which hardly admits of a description in words. The warriors engage in a mimic combat, once more they charge, retreat, conquer, and are defeated, all in turns. In front of them, exciting them to new exertions, with word and gesture, undulate in a graceful dance of their own the ”intombis,” the young beauties of the tribe, with green branches in their hands, and all their store of savage finery glittering on their shapely limbs. Some of these maidens are really handsome, and round them again dance the children, armed with mimic spears and s.h.i.+elds. Wild as seems the confusion, through it all, even the moments of highest excitement, some sort of rough order is maintained; more, it would seem, by mutual sounds than by word of command or sense of discipline.
Even a Zulu warrior must, sooner or later, grow weary, and at length the signal is given for the dance to end. The companies are drawn up in order again, and receive the praise and thanks of those in whose honour they had been called together. To these compliments they reply in a novel and imposing fas.h.i.+on. At a given signal each man begins to softly tap his ox-hide s.h.i.+eld with the handle of his spear, producing a sound somewhat resembling the murmur of the distant sea. By slow degrees it grows louder and louder, till at length it rolls and re-echoes from the hills like thunder, and comes to its conclusion with a fierce, quick rattle. This is the royal war-salute of the Zulus, and is but rarely to be heard. One more sonorous salute with voice and hand, and then the warriors disappear as they came, dropping swiftly and silently over the brow of the hill in companies. In a few moments no sign or vestige of dance or dancers remained, save, before our eyes, the well-trodden ground, a few lingering girls laden with large calabashes of beer, and in our ears some distant dying s.n.a.t.c.hes of chants. The singers were on their joyful way to slay and devour the oxen provided as a stimulus and reward for them by their chief's liberality.
When the last dusky figure had topped the rising ground over which the homeward path lay, and had stood out for an instant against the flaming background of the western sun, and then dropped, as it were, back into its native darkness beyond those gates of fire, the old chief drew near.
He had divested himself of his heavy war-dress, and sat down amicably amongst us.
”Ah,” he said, taking the hand of Sir Theophilus Shepstone, and addressing him by his native name, ”Ah! t'Sompseu, t'Sompseu, the seasons are many since first I held this your hand. Then we two were young, and life lay bright before us, and now you have grown great, and are growing grey, and I have grown very old! I have eaten the corn of my time, till only the cob is left for me to suck, and, _ow_, it is bitter.
But it is well that I should grasp this your hand once more, oh, holder of the Spirit of Chaka,[*] before I sit down and sleep with my fathers.
_Ow_, I am glad.”
[*] The reader must bear in mind that the Zulu warrior is buried sitting and in full war-dress. Chaka, or T'chaka, was the founder of the Zulu power.
Imposing as was this old-time war-dance, it is not difficult to imagine the heights to which its savage grandeur must have swelled when it was held--as was the custom at each new year--at the kraal of Cetywayo, King of the Zulus. Then 30,000 warriors took part in it, and a tragic interest was added to the fierce spectacle by the slaughter of many men.
It was, in fact, a great political opportunity for getting rid of the ”irreconcilable” element from council and field. Then, in the moment of wildest enthusiasm, the witch-finder darted forward and lightly touched with a switch some doomed man, sitting, it may be, quietly among the spectators, or capering with his fellow-soldiers. Instantly he was led away, and his place knew him no more.
Throughout the whole performance there was one remarkable and genuine feature, the strong personal attachment of each member of the tribe to its chief--not only to the fine old chief, Pagadi, their leader in former years, but to the head and leader for the years to come.
It must be remembered that this system of chieftains.h.i.+p and its attendant law is, to all the social bearings of South African native life, what the tree is to its branches; it has grown through long, long ages amid a people slow to forget old traditions, and equally slow to receive new ideas; dependent on it are all the native's customs, all his keen ideas of right and justice; in it lies embodied his history of the past, and from it springs his hope for the future. Surely even the most uncompromising of those marching under the banner of civilisation must hesitate before they condemn this deep-rooted system to instant uprootal.[*] The various influences of the white man have eaten into the native system as rust into iron, and their action will never cease till all be destroyed. The bulwarks of barbarism, its minor customs and minor laws, are gone, or exist only in name; but its two great principles, polygamy and chieftains.h.i.+p, yet flourish and are strong. Time will undo his work, and find for these also a place among forgotten things. And it is the undoubted duty of us English, who absorb people and territories in the high name of civilisation, to be true to our principles and our aim, and aid the great destroyer by any and every safe and justifiable means. But between the legitimate means and the rash, miscalculating uprootal of customs and principles, which are not the less venerable and good in their way because they do not accord with our own present ideas, there is a great gulf fixed. Such an uprootal might precipitate an outburst of the very evils it aims at destroying.
[*] I do not wish the remarks in this paper, which was written some years ago, to be taken as representing my present views on the Natal native question, formed after a longer and more intimate acquaintance with its peculiarities, for which I beg to refer the reader to the chapter on Natal.--Author.
What the ultimate effect of our policy will be, when the leaven has leavened the whole, when the floodgates are lifted, and this vast native population (which, contrary to all ordinary precedent, does _not_ melt away before the sun of the white man's power) is let loose in its indolent thousands, unrestrained, save by the bonds of civilised law, who can presume to say? But this is not for present consideration.
Subject to due precautions, the path of progress must of necessity be followed, and the results of such following left in the balancing hands of Fate and the future.
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