are twenty thousand whites to be protected amidst three hundred thousand blacks, with other hundreds of thousands crowding around without number, and he has to make the Zulu know that he is master. And he quite understands that he has to keep the philanthropist and Exeter Hall,—perhaps even Downing Street and Printing House Square,—a little in the dark as to the way he does it. But he is not wilfully cruel to the Zulu, and not often really unkind.
I was riding, when in Natal, over a mountain with a gentleman high in authority when we met a Zulu with his assegai and knobkirrie.[1] It is still the custom of a Zulu to carry with him his assegai and knobkirrie, though the assegai is unlawful wherever he may be, and the knobkirrie is forbidden in the towns. My companion did not know the Zulu, but found it necessary, for some official reason, to require the man's presence on the following morning at the place from which we had ridden, which was then about ten miles distant. The purport of the required attendance I now forget,—if I ever knew it,—but it had some reference to the convenience of the party of which I made one. The order was given and the Zulu, assenting, was passing on. But a sudden thought struck my companion. He spoke a word in the native tongue desiring that the assegai and knobkirrie might be given up to him. With a rueful look the weapons were at once surrendered and the unarmed Zulu passed on. "He knows that I do not know him,"
- ↑ A knobkirrie is a peculiar bludgeon with a thin stick and a large knob which in the hands of an expert might be very deadly. An assegai, as my reader probably knows, is a short spear with a sharp iron head.
