Читать книгу Seven Legs Across the Seas: A Printer's Impressions of Many Lands - Samuel Murray - Страница 13

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Zululand was next visited. During the reign of their kings Zulus controlled their own internal affairs—made their own laws, apportioned the land, chastised their subjects, conferred with British officials concerning border line rules—were, in fact, in every sense, a distinct, unfettered race of people. Zululand was Zululand then. War after war, with gatling guns and modern fighting implements pitted against their mediæval arms—the assegai, or spear—naturally made the tribe submissive and wiped out their border line. So long as they had a king there was always danger of trouble from Zululand. Dinizulu, the last ruler, was taken prisoner, and was "boarded" in a Transvaal penitentiary until a few years ago, when he died. The border line between Natal and Zululand passed away, and the interests of the Zulus and the affairs of Zululand are now looked after and administered by officials of the Province of Natal.

The train, passing through cuts and grades, is half embowered with flowering trees, growing on the banks. The giant bamboo, in obedience to a summery wind, was gracefully swaying to and fro; the aloe, with its flowery top, sixteen feet above the ground, sentinel-like, contributed its share to the floral ensemble, and, together with an almost endless tract of soft, light green sugar-cane growing on each side of the railroad track, offered a mellow landscape found in but few parts of the world.

A depressing contrast to nature—the Indian coolie scourge—is witnessed at every stopping place in this part. We were in the sugar growing section of Natal, and, as mentioned previously, Indian coolies are employed entirely in this industry. There they were by hundreds, most of them of objectionable appearance, and a dirty, almost naked, baby astraddle every woman's hip, the Hindu mother's custom of carrying her child.

We reached the Tugela River, the border line between Natal and Zululand, and, thirty miles further, the train stopped at Ginginhlovu, our destination. Ginginhlovu (elephant, in Zulu) was 93 miles from where we started, and the train was seven hours running that distance, running to schedule, too. Indian shanty stores were pleasantly absent, as none but white traders are allowed to do business in Zululand.

The post cart is the stage coach of South Africa. Strongly built, it is covered with canvas, has two wide wheels and contains two seats. A seat will accommodate three persons in a pinch—the maximum capacity of the coach being five passengers and the driver—but as the latter usually takes up two-thirds of the front seat to handle the large team required to draw the coach, the ordinary capacity of the cart is four passengers, three occupying the rear and one the front seat. A frame at the back serves for luggage, and small hand baggage may be put under the seats. Four or six mules comprise a cart team, the charge being ten cents a mile.

We left the railroad, and our mode of travel into the interior of Zululand was by cart, wagon—a conveyance drawn by beasts. Five passengers, the maximum number, squeezed themselves into the cart. The next trip inland was on the following day, for which we would have to wait, the station-master had informed us, "unless there was a transport going to Eshowe." Eventually a transport—a truck 18 feet long—was found, the driver of which said he thought he had room for another passenger. The transport, ridged with bags of cornmeal five feet high, was drawn by four teams of mules.

"Climb on," said the driver to a group of six; "we'll be starting in a few minutes." Three women, two men and a boy began to scale the transport up to the top of the load. "Get up," said the driver to the mules, when a start was made for the interior of Zululand, the passengers sitting on the top tier of cornmeal bags of the loaded African transport.

We traveled slowly seventeen miles over a good macadam road. "That's the home of Dinizulu, the Zulu king," said the boy passenger, as we passed a frame building close to the road. We reached our destination just at sundown—Eshowe, the old capital of Zululand, and one of the prettiest places visited in South Africa.

Shade trees, flowers, comfortable homes built in spacious yards; small, but substantial, public buildings; a good library, a wooded glen just away from the town, in which had been built a splendid cement swimming pool, give an insight into what the old Zulu capital looks like now. The comfortable appearance of Eshowe has been made by the European. English and native weekly papers are printed here, and the quality of the work is good.

A European boy volunteered to show me about town. He had taken me to the swimming pool, and as we were passing through a timbered portion of this natural park he suddenly shouted, "Look out!" He then pointed to a big fly that had just passed between us. "If that fly had struck you the bitten part would swell up as large as a hen's egg. Often the effects of the bite will assume the nature of an ulcer," he added. A great number of flies in South Africa draw blood when they strike a victim, whether man or beast.

We had 35 miles more to travel before our last stop in Zululand would be reached. The post cart left at five o'clock in the morning, with four passengers, and was drawn by four mules. The road was level for the most part, with high grass growing on each side, broken only by an occasional giraffe thorn or mimosa tree. The mimosa was in flower, and so much fragrance was diffused from the thorn tree that one would know of its existence if it were not in sight a hundred feet away.

"Hello, Graham!" shouted one of the passengers to a white man who stood in the door of a building at which we had pulled up. We had reached N'Halini, the first relay, where we breakfasted. "Hello! everybody," returned Graham, for he proved to be the proprietor of the eating station. "I haven't any eggs to serve you this morning, but I'm strong on steak, ham and bacon. Bring out a big piece of steak to make up for the eggs," he directed one of his Zulu boys.

Graham is a sailor with a wooden leg. He entertained us by telling how many times he had been caught in the net fastened to the boom of a sailing ship—a "wind-jammer," as he termed that style of craft—and how, when encountering the fierce gales that blow in the Straits of Magellan, he had been blown entirely off his feet, his body being lifted in mid-air, his legs suggestive of ribbons, while holding to a deck rail.

"Did you get enough to eat?" he asked, when we had finished. And we admitted we had. Graham had two pigs eaten by crocodiles the day before, and he could not restrain himself from bemoaning his luck.

"So long, fellows! I'll have eggs for you when you come back. So long!" were the parting words of the onetime sailor, as, with an additional team of mules, we started on our second relay.

"Sit forward, please, while we are going up this seven-mile hill; the cart is tilting back too much," said the driver. We had five passengers now, as another one had got on at Graham's place. It's easier to say Graham's place than it is to try to pronounce the Zulu name.

On, on we traveled over those beautiful hills of Zululand, the passengers chatting as we moved along. Grassy hills, 500 feet high, bare of timber and even shrubbery, with native huts built on the sides, and small patches of corn growing here and there, proved of interest. Vultures were flying high up in the air, bevies of guinea fowl scurried to cover, and the wagtail, a black and white bird of swallow size, with a tail ten inches long, crossed the roadway from time to time. We had been told of the beauty of Zululand, and nothing had been exaggerated.

Grass—long and short—was growing everywhere, enough to feed millions of cattle, and not a "critter" grazing in sight. The Zulus, before and for some years after the white man settled in South Africa, were a wealthy tribe. Hundreds of thousands of cattle, sheep and goats roamed over and fed off these ever-grassy hills; but tick fever—East Coast fever, it is as often called—had fattened the vultures and made the Zulu poor.

We reached the second relay, then the third, but the beauty of landscape did not diminish. Our next relay will be the end of our stage journey—Melmoth—52 miles from the railroad.

"The stopping off place" is a term often heard, but when one reaches a point where there is no railroad and the terminus only of post carts, it is certainly the stopping off place. Europeans live in remote places still beyond Melmoth, and their mail is brought to them by native postmen on foot.

We reached our destination early in the afternoon. Mail for persons living beyond "the stopping off place," brought with us in the cart, was to start on its way at three o'clock. As it was a week before Christmas, the post contained a great number of Christmas presents. The mail finally being sorted, it was entrusted to the postman's care. All the letters could be put in a coat pocket, but the presents strapped to his body made a heavy load.

A Zulu, six feet tall, stood on the porch of the squatty postoffice building, looking like an off-colored Santa Claus. Having reached for a stick a foot longer than his height, he stood up straight, waiting for the word to go.

"All right, Jim," the postmaster ordered in the native tongue. "Ba, ba," returned the negro in a low voice, bowing and saluting, with one hand raised to the side of his head. He turned round quickly and walked alertly in the direction where white people live, to be made happy by presents sent to them by friends living in distant lands. Thirty-three miles was the distance the Zulu carried the mail. It was three o'clock in the afternoon when he left the Melmoth post office, and was due at the next post station at 9:30 the morning following.

"He'll be there on the minute," the postmaster replied to a question as to whether the carrier could travel the distance in the time allotted, considering the heavy load. "He never fails us. Always on time—in hail, rain or shine," he concluded.