They filled the whole of the eastern side along the shores of the Indian Ocean, and are still to be found there in undiminished or even increasing numbers. Divided into two great branches, and these again being split up into endless tribes, they yet all belong to the great Bantu family. Unlike the little Hottentot, and the yet smaller Bushman, the Bantu is tall and dark, sometimes approaching in colour to the black of the Negro. Physically, he is finely proportioned and of unusual strength; his appearance suggesting a Negroid people with a cross of Arab blood; his traditions, customs, and certain words in his language, seeming to bear out this suggestion. Branches of this people are found as far north as Zanzibar. They differ from the West-coast Negro; and, in place of his child-like abandon, have a proud reserve, and an intensely self-conscious and reflective mental attitude. The language they speak is of a perfect construction, lending itself largely to figurative and poetical forms, yet capable of giving great precision to exact thought. The two great branches into which they are divided are about as distinct from one another as are the Celtic and Teutonic branches of our own Indo-European family; the language of one half being as intelligible to the other as French is to the German. When analysed, the derivation of their speech from some common source is clear. Of the one branch, popularly known in the Colony as the "Kaffir,"[25] the Zulu and Matabele nations may perhaps be taken as the best examples at the present day. [25] Kaffir: A loose term, derived from the Arabic, and sometimes employed to signify all dark-skinned Africans, but generally used in the Colony to designate this particular branch of the Bantu people. Of the other, or Chuana family, one of the best examples to be found is the Basuto, or Ma' Katees nation (so called from Ma' Katees, a warlike chieftainess who ninety years ago gathered a number of broken tribes under her rule and settled them among the Maluti Mountains in what is now Basutoland); or another, in the Bamangwato under their noteworthy chieftain Kama; a man whose persistent endeavour at the present day to enable his people to grasp the incoming tide of civilization, and to rise on its waves instead of being submerged by them, is unique in the history of savage peoples; his endeavour to preserve his tribe from the evils of civilization, till they are strong enough to grasp its benefits, constituting one of the most interesting social experiments which is being carried on anywhere on the earth's surface at the latter end of the nineteenth century. To this Chuana family belong also the Mashonas and other kindred tribes.