up a tree
till Heitsi Eibib cursed him and bade him walk on the ground. He also
cursed the hare, "and the hare ran away, and is still running".(2) The
name of the first man is given as Eichaknanabiseb (with a multitude of
"clicks"), and he is said to have met all the animals on a flat rock,
and played a game with them for copper beads. The rainbow was made by
Gaunab, who is generally a malevolent being, of whom more hereafter.

(1) Fables of Yncas (Hakluyt Society), p. 127.

(2) Tsuni Goam, pp. 66, 67.

Leaving these African races, which, whatever their relative degrees of
culture, are physically somewhat contemptible, we reach their northern
neighbours, the Zulus. They are among the finest, and certainly among
the least religious, of the undeveloped peoples. Their faith is mainly
in magic and ghosts, but there are traces of a fading and loftier
belief.

The social and political condition of the Zulu is well understood. They
are a pastoral, but not a nomadic people, possessing large kraals or
towns. They practise agriculture, and they had, till quite recently, a
centralised government and a large army, somewhat on the German system.
They appear to have no regular class of priests, and supernatural power
is owned by the chiefs and the king, and by diviners and sorcerers, who
conduct the sacrifices. Their myths are the more interesting because,
whether from their natural scepticism, which confuted Bishop Colenso in
his orthodox days, or from acquaintance with European ideas, they have
begun to doubt the truth of their own traditions.(1) The Zulu theory
of the origin of man and of the world commences with the feats of
Unkulunkulu, "the old, old one," who, in some legends, was the first
man, "and broke off in the beginning". Like Manabozho among the Indians
of North America, and like Wainamoinen among the Finns, Unkulunkulu
imparted to men a knowledge of the arts, of marriage, and so forth. His
exploits in this direction, however, must be considered in another part
of this work. Men in general "came out of a bed of reeds".(2) But there
is much confusion about this bed of reeds, named "Uthlanga". The younger
people ask where the bed of reeds was; the old men do not know, and
neither did their fathers know. But they stick to it that "that bed of
reeds still exists". Educated Zulus appear somewhat inclined to take the
expression in an allegorical sense, and to understand the reeds either
as a kind of protoplasm or as a