Pioneers and Founders

The dusky framework from their tops

Like a large mouse-trap round me spread.

To stand erect I never tried,

For reasons you may guess:

Full fourteen feet my hut was wide,

Its height was nine feet less.

My furniture, a scanty store,

On saddle-bags beside me laid,

A hurdle, used to close the door,

Raised upon stones, my table made.'

There he received a bundle of the native sugar-cane, a bowl of maize beer from Dingarn, and was invited to his palace.

This was surrounded by a fence, outside which the Captain was desired to sit down. Presently a black head and very stout pair of shoulders appeared above it, and a keen sable visage eyed the visitor fixedly for some time, in silence, which was only broken by these words, while indicating an ox, 'There is the beast I give you to slaughter.' His black majesty then vanished, but presently to reappear from beneath the gateway dressed in a long blue cloak, with a white collar, and devices at the back. After directing the distribution of some heaps of freshly slain oxen that lay around, he stood like a statue till a seat was brought him, and then entered into conversation. Captain Gardiner made him understand that trade was not the object of the visit; but the real purpose was quite beyond him; he seemed to regard what was proposed to him as an impossibility, and began to inquire after the presents, which, unfortunately, were still on the road.

The delay exposed the Captain to some inconvenience and danger, and two indunas, or chiefs, a sort of prime ministers, who were offended with him for not having applied to the king through them, treated him with increasing insolence. At last he persuaded them that he had better send a note to hasten the coming of the presents, and he also managed to write a letter for England, on his last half-sheet of paper, by the light of a lamp made of a rag wick floating in native butter in a calabash. From time to time he was called upon to witness the wonderful evolutions, manoeuvres, and mock fights in the camp. The men were solely soldiers; the women did all the work, planting maize, weeding corn, and herding cattle, and thus the more wives a man had the more slaves he could employ. Every wife had a value, and could only be obtained from her father for a certain price in cattle, varying according to his rank. If the full rate were not paid, she remained, as well as her children, the property of her father or the head of her family. The king, having the power to help himself, had an establishment of ninety women, who on gala- days, or when his army was going to take the field, were drawn up in a regiment, all wearing two long feathers on the top of their heads, a veil of strings of coloured beads over their faces, bead skirts, and brass rings over their throats and arms; these beads being the current coin of the traders. They approached and retreated in files, flourishing their arms like bell-ringers, while they sang:-

'Arise, vulture,

Thou art the bird that eateth other birds.'

These were, however, not wives, only female slaves. Either from jealousy of possible sons growing up, or from the desire not to be considered as in the ranks of the umpagati-elders or married men- neither Charka nor Dingarn would marry, and no man could take a wife without the king's permission. Dingarn wore his head closely shaven, whereas the married trained their woolly hair to fasten over a circle of reed, so as to look much as if they had an inverted saucepan on their heads. Besides this they wore nothing but a sort of apron of skin before and behind, except when gaily arrayed in beads, or ornaments of leopard's fur and teeth, for dancing or for battle. Their wealth was their cattle, and their mealie or maize grounds; their food, beef, mealies, and curdled milk; their drink, beer, made of maize; their great luxury, snuff, made of dried dacca and burnt aloes, and taken from an ivory spoon. Though sometimes acting with great cruelty, and wholly ignorant, they were by no means a dull or indolent people; they were full of courage and spirit, excellent walkers and runners, capable of learning and of thinking, and with much readiness to receive new ideas.

The presents arrived, and the red cloak, made of the long scarlet nap often used in linings, was presented, and gave infinite satisfaction; the king tried it on first himself, then judged of the effect upon the back of one of his servants, caused it to be carried flowing through the air, and finally hung it up outside his palace for the admiration of his subjects, then laid it by for the great national festival at the feast of first-fruits.

Captain Gardiner's object was to obtain a house and piece of land and protection for a Christian missionary, and with this object he remained at the kraal, trying to make some impression on Dingarn, and the two indunas, who assured him that they were the king's eyes and ears. Thus he became witness to much horrible barbarity. One of the least shocking of Dingarn's acts was the exhibiting the powers of a burning-glass that had been given him, by burning a hole in the wrist of one of his servants; and his indifference to the pain and death of others was frightful. His own brother, the next in succession, was, with his two servants, put to death through some jealousy; and, more horrible still, every living creature in thirty villages belonging to him was massacred as a matter of course.

Captain Gardiner, though often horrified and sickened by the sights he was obliged to witness, remained for a month, and then, after accompanying the king on his march, and seeing some astonishing reviews and dances of his wild warriors, made another effort; but the king referred him to the two indunas, and the indunas were positive that they did not wish to learn, either they or their people. They would never hear nor understand his book, but if he would instruct them in the use of the musket he was welcome to stay. Dingarn pronounced, 'I will not overrule the decision of my indunas;' but, probably looking on the white man as a mine of presents, he politely invited Gardiner to return.

So ended his first attempt, and with no possessions remaining except his clothes, his saddle, a spoon, and a Testament, he proceeded to the Tugela, where he met his friend Berken, who had made up his mind to settle in Natal, and he set out to return to England for the purchase of stock and implements; but the vessel in which he sailed was never heard of more.

Captain Gardiner remained at Port Natal, which in 1835 consisted of a cluster of huts, all of them built Kaffir- fashion, like so many hollow haycocks, except Mr. Collis's, which was regarded as English because it had upright sides, with a good garden surrounded by reeds. About thirty English and a few Hottentots clustered around, and some three thousand Zulus, refugees from Dingarn's cruelty, who showed themselves ready and willing to work for hire, but who exposed their masters to the danger of the king coming after them with fire and assagai. Hitherto on such an alarm the whole settlement had been wont to take to the woods, but their numbers were so increasing that they were beginning to erect a stockade and think of defence.

To this little germ of a colony, Allen Gardiner brought the first recollection of Christian faith and duty. On Sunday mornings he stood under a tree, as he had been wont to do on the deck of his ship, and read the Church Service in English to such as would come round him and be reminded of their homes; in the afternoon, by the help of his interpreter, he prayed with and for the Kaffirs, and expounded the truths of the Gospel; and in the week, he kept school for such Kaffir children as he could collect, dressing them decently in printed calico. He began with very few, partly because many parents fancied he would steal and make slaves of them, and partly because he wished to train a few to be in advance and act as monitors to the rest. The English were on very good terms with him, and allotted a piece of land for a missionary settlement, which he called Berea, and began to build upon it in the fashion of the country.

Fresh threats from Dingarn led the settlers to try to come to a treaty with him, by which he was to leave them unmolested with all their Kaffirs, on their undertaking to harbour no more of his deserters. There was something hard in this, considering the horrid barbarities from which the deserters fled, and the impossibility of carrying out the agreement, as no one could undertake to watch the Tugela; but Captain Gardiner, always eager and hasty, thinking that he should thus secure safety for the colony and opportunities for the mission, undertook the embassy, and set forth in a waggon with two Zulus and Cyrus, falling in on the way with one of the grotesque parties of European hunters, who were wont to go on expeditions after the elephant, hippopotamus, and buffalo, with a hunting train of Hottentots and Kaffirs in their company. On whose aspect he remarks truly:-

'I've seen the savage in his wildest mood,

And marked him reeked with human blood,

But never so repulsive made.

Something incongruous strikes the mind

Whene'er a barbarous race we find