South Africa -- Description and travel; South Africa -- History -- 1836-1909; South Africa -- History -- To 1836
I liked the Zulu of the Natal capital very thoroughly. You have no cabs
there,--and once when in green ignorance I had myself carried from one
end of the town to another in a vehicle, I had to pay 10s. 6d. for the
accommodation. But the Zulu, ornamented and graceful as he is, will
carry your portmanteau on his head all the way for sixpence. Hitherto
money has not become common in Natal as in British Kafraria, and the
Zulu is cheap. He will hold your horse for you for an hour, and not
express a sense of injury if he gets nothing;--but for a silver
threepence he will grin at you with heartfelt gratitude. Copper I
believe he will not take,--but copper is so thoroughly despised in the
Colony that no one dares to shew it. At Maritzburg I found that I could
always catch a Zulu at a moment’s notice to do anything. At the hotel or
the club, or your friend’s house you signify to some one that you want a
boy, and the boy is there at once. If you desired him to go a journey of
200 miles to the very boundary of the Colony, he would go instantly, and
be not a whit surprised. He will travel 30 or 40 miles in the
twenty-four hours for a shilling a day, and will assuredly do the
business confided to him. Maritzburg is 55 miles from Durban and an
acquaintance told me that he had sent down a very large wedding cake by
a boy in 24 hours. “But if he had eaten it?” I asked. “His Chief would
very soon have eaten him,” was the reply.
But there is a drawback to all these virtues. A Zulu will sometimes
cross your path with so strong an injury to your nose as almost to make
you ill. I have been made absolutely sick by the entrance of a
good-natured Zulu into my bedroom of a morning, when he has come near me
in his anxiety about my boots or my hot water. In this respect he is
more potent than any of his brethren of the negro race who have come in
my way. Why it is or whence I am unable to say, or how it comes to pass
that now and again there is one who will almost knock you down, while a
dozen others shall cross you leaving no more than a mere flavour of
Zuluism on your nasal organs. I do not think that dirt has anything to
do with it. They are a specially clean people, washing themselves often
and using soap with a bountiful liberality unknown among many white men.
As the fox who leaves to the hounds the best scent is always the fox in
the strongest health, so I fancy is it with the Zulu,--whereas dirt is
always unhealthy. But there is the fact; and any coming visitor to Natal
had better remember it, and be on his guard.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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