It is easy to see how this custom of holding a review almost immediately after the battle, and causing either reward or punishment to come swiftly upon the soldiers, must have added to the efficiency of the armies, especially when the system was carried out by a man like its originator Tchaka, an astute, sanguinary, determined, and pitiless despot. Under the two successive reigns of Dingan and Panda, and especially under the latter, the efficiency of the Zulu army--the eaters of men--has notably diminished, this result being probably owing to the neighborhood of the English colony at Natal, in which the Zulu warriors can find a refuge when they fear that their lives are endangered. Formerly, the men had no possible refuge, so that a Kaffir was utterly in the power of his chief, and the army was therefore more of a machine than it is at present. Reviews such as have been described are not only held in war time, but frequently take place in times of peace. It has been mentioned that the king of the Zulu tribe has twenty-six war-kraals, or garrison towns, and he generally contrives to visit each of them in the course of the year. Each time that he honors the kraal by his presence the troops are turned out, and a review is held, though not always accompanied by the lavish distribution of rewards and punishment which distinguishes those which are held after battle. The vicissitudes of Kaffir warfare are really remarkable from a military point of view. Originally, the only idea which the Kaffirs had of warfare was a desultory kind of skirmishing, in which each man fought “for his own hand,” and did not reckon on receiving any support from his comrades, each of whom was engaged in fight on his own account. In fact, war was little more than a succession of duels, and, if a warrior succeeded in killing the particular enemy to whom he was opposed, he immediately sought another. But the idea of large bodies of men acting in concert, and being directed by one mind, was one that had not occurred to the Kaffirs until the time of Tchaka. When that monarch introduced a system and a discipline into warfare, the result was at once apparent. Individual skirmishers had no chance against large bodies of men, mutually supporting each other, moving as if actuated by one mind, and, under the guidance of a single leader, advancing with a swift but steady impetuosity that the undisciplined soldiers of the enemy could not resist. Discipline could not be turned against the Zulus, for Tchaka left the conquered tribes no time to organize themselves into armies, even if they had possessed leaders who were capable of that task. His troops swept over the country like an army of locusts, consuming everything on their way, and either exterminating the various tribes, or incorporating them in some capacity or other among the Zulus.