But all, both northern Zulus and southern Xosas, are essentially one people in speech, physique, usages and social institutions. The hair is uniformly of a somewhat frizzly texture, the colour of a light or clear brown amongst the Ama-Tembus, but elsewhere very dark, the Swazis being almost "blue-black"; the head decidedly long (72.5) and high (195.8); nose variable, both Negroid and perfectly regular; height above the mean 1.75 m. to 1.8 m. (5 ft. 9 in. to 5 ft. 11 in.); figure shapely and muscular, though Fritsch's measurements show that it is sometimes far from the almost ideal standard of beauty with which some early observers have credited them. Mentally the Zulu-Xosas stand much higher than the true Negro, as shown especially in their political organisation, which, before the development of Dingiswayo's military system under European influences, was a kind of patriarchal monarchy controlled by a powerful aristocracy. The nation was grouped in tribes connected by the ties of blood and ruled by the hereditary _inkose_, or feudal chief, who was supreme, with power of life and death, within his own jurisdiction. Against his mandates, however, the nobles could protest in council, and it was in fact their decisions that established precedents and the traditional code of common law. "This common law is well adapted to a people in a rude state of society. It holds everyone accused of crime guilty unless he can prove himself innocent; it makes the head of the family responsible for the conduct of all its branches, the village collectively for all resident in it, and the clan for each of its villages. For the administration of the law there are courts of various grades, from any of which an appeal may be taken to the Supreme Council, presided over by the paramount chief, who is not only the ruler but also the father of the people[257]." In the interior, between the southern coast ranges and the Zambesi, the Hottentot and Bushman aborigines were in prehistoric ages almost everywhere displaced or reduced to servitude by other Bantu peoples such as the Ma-Kalakas and Ma-Shonas, the Be-Chuanas and the kindred Ba-Sutos. Of these the first arrivals (from the north) appear to have been the Ma-Shonas and Ma-Kalakas, who were being slowly "eaten up" by the Ma-Tabili when the process was arrested by the timely intervention of the English in Rhodesia.