ed.
The Kaffirs, or as they called themselves, the Amazosas, claimed descent
from Zuide, a great chief of the fifteenth century in the lake country.
They are among the tallest people in the world, averaging five feet ten
inches, and are slim, well-proportioned, and muscular. The more warlike
tribes were usually clothed in leopard or ox skins. Cattle formed their
chief wealth, stock breeding and hunting and fighting their main pursuits.
Mentally they were men of tact and intelligence, with a national religion
based upon ancestor worship, while their government was a patriarchal
monarchy limited by an aristocracy and almost feudal in character. The
common law which had grown up from the decisions of the chiefs made the
head of the family responsible for the conduct of its branches, a village
for all its residents, and the clan for all its villages. Finally there
was a paramount chief, who was the civil and military father of his
people. These people laid waste to the coast regions and in 1779 came in
contact with the Dutch. A series of Dutch-Kaffir wars ensued between 1779
and 1795 in which the Dutch were hard pressed.

In 1806 the English took final possession of Cape Colony. At that time
there were twenty-five thousand Boers, twenty-five thousand pure and mixed
Hottentots, and twenty-five thousand slaves secured from the east coast.
Between 1811 and 1877 there were six Kaffir-English wars. One of these in
1818 grew out of the ignorant interference of the English with the Kaffir
tribal system; then there came a terrible war between 1834 and 1835,
followed by the annexation of all the country as far as the Kei River. The
war of the Axe (1846-48) led to further annexation by the British.

Hostilities broke out again in 1856 and 1863. In the former year,
despairing of resistance to invading England, a prophet arose who advised
the wholesale destruction of all Kaffir property except weapons, in order
that this faith might bring back their dead heroes. The result was that
almost a third of the nation perished from hunger. Fresh troubles occurred
in 1877, when the Ama-Xosa confederacy was finally broken up, and to-day
gradually these tribes are passing from independence to a state of mild
vassalage to the British.

Meantime the more formidable part of the Zulu-Kaffirs had been united
under the terrible Chief Chaka. He had organized a military system, not a
new one by any means, but one of which we hear rumors back in the lake