A Terrible Pupissmnt.

Manawatu Herald, Volume II, Issue 277, 5 July 1889, Page 2

A Terrible Pupissmnt.

! Istwo pa*ts. ■!. . . : PARTI. 1 :; ;: ;':;.'■ -. 1 here was a strange story in Zttlu-J,"; land, dating before I>he time* tb*t Oatewavo, the lait King) begta hit reign. It'was.in th>jhse:- L Chaka (the great-uncle of yat«Wayo), waii killed by hit brothers, as he layfdying hi i* **> : . ported to have said thwe Word* W ■' them : "You hope to ftftengtfiMfc 9 ' though you kill toe,, thiri% not jour reign shall belong. lim 740 that I hear the sounds! the fbet of the great white people, and that thai land shall be trodden by theia"-<---wordf whioh hare been looked upen m ft prtpheoy V tlje

hysJcaUy lfce : Zulus are the finest u»e of luxffir.s ;u >outh Africa they «an endure great fatigue, are brave in -war, and further advanced ia a rude form of civi ization than their northern neighbours, the Amaswazi a,nd the Amatongas. It was for their benefit Golenso tianslated the Bible into the soft-sounding Zola. Two grammars were also published, one by the < Bishop, the For continuation of reading, matter see fuurthpoffe.

other by Louis Crout, an. . Annsricab missionary. The missionary -work , in Zululand is now largely supple- j mentedby native Zulu teachers, w&o , read to their own people in their own language. In the schools, eB- , pecially those established at the town of Colenso, on the 1 ugela, they are i^nght trades, and the young ■women plain sewing and such simple We left Colenso in the company of a Dutch trader going up-country, ' with calico, beads, and Knives to barter for ivory and hides; in two pays we reached Umvoti. The Omvoti mission station, where the American missionaries Jive, is built on the bosom of a mountain, overlooking a lovely and picturesque valley ; at one's feet the shining river, beyond the open country, ' bush, plain, and volcanic range of hills. At the mission station we found substantially built mud huts, with overhanging thatched roofs and shaded by fine trees. The huts were kept very tidily, some having glass windows and whitewashed walls and each a small garden with patches of melon, Kaffir corn, and fruit trees. It was in contrast to what followed later that we remembered and looked back to this little village of contentment, ord^r, and .prosperity. Here the Zulus lived and worked; many of them, it is true, were men who had fled from Zululand proper on account of oppressions and superstitious cruelties, .bringing with them their wives and their little ones ; others were men who still maintained a kind of relation wirh their nation, and who, from time to time, visited at the great tribal meetings. I seems a mistake to have permitted this wavering allegiance, it was serving two [masters, and these men were the hardest to reclaim, as once away among their own people they discarded their clothes and with them their Christianity/ falling back into the orgies the customs and cruelties still permitted and encouraged by the c head men.' The Germans have the name of being the most successful missionaries, because, unlike the English and Americans., they do not at once attempt to con-, vert a man wh<» has lived all his life in barbarism into a brand new Christian ; instead of that, they di j rect their attention to teaching them the arts of civi isation, and then { later they make the attempt to inculcate the faith. After all, it is the children with whom the missionaries of all denominations do the best work, and the most lasting. Afyer leaving this peaceful, village on the Umvoti ivur, we crossed the river at the ' drift,' and still travelling northwards, in a couple of days again reached the Tugeia, and fording this now widrt rivtr, we we c a* laat in Zululnud proper, among a brave people, but 'also among a people full of' superstitions and the cruelties engendei ed of vile beliefs. The story of terrible torture I have to tell at once illustrates a Zulu custom and the uphill work of the missionaries to destroy the ancient laws binding them. When my friend Cyril Wood and I left Umvoti with Hertzogg, the Dutch trader, we had ten Kaffirs with us, bullock drivers and servants, two large waggons, and twenty span of oxen. Shortly after crossing the river we met; two Zulus, travelling alone, the elder wearing a black ring fastened to his hnir, a sign of manhood, also denoiing the wearer to be a warrior, and the son of a chief. Strangers, whether black or white, never pass each other in the wilds of Africa without a long parley and after some conversation this man offered himself to me as a servant, professed to know the country well, to fcave accompanied other traders, and to have always proved himself a reliant guide. Hertzogg questioned the man, approved of him, and I ac« cepted him, agreeing to pay him five shillings a week and find him in food. The ludicrous part of the ar rangement was this, whatever .work I set him to do, he consigned to the care of the youth who accompanied kirn. \\ hen I asked Hertzogg the meaning of it, I learned that Umbarki, my new servant, did not demean himself by work, being the son of a chief, but jfchat his young follower acted foi* him. We arrived one moonlight night on the outskirts of alarge native "kraal" and were s*obri encamped 'with all our belongings under a clump of giant mimosa trees. Contrary, to their, usual custom all our Kaffirs' remained closV 'to the waggons, instead of gathering round the glowing fire, singing their impromptu songs, smoking their ' dacch' pipes, as they invariably did when the long weary day's work of" trekking" and ' • inspanning ' ' >y as over. Hertzogg caJJfeauJmty'aki to him — we knew he Ittd^been into the town whose round-topped huts we could see stretching from the upland by the river to the ajaoent hill-pide. •• Shall not trade here ? " asked Hertzogg in Dutch ; have the people deserted that they are so silent ? " II Baas, ' replied Umbarka. ** tbid is the kraal of Pambeli, the great lnduua bis son '"has 1 bfeen 1 bewitched and is dead. To-morrow the diviners will smell out the • itbatuki ' who has 10 VI GONCfiUOJED,