r of the inhabitants of India.

War was the natural state of the tribes toward one another, just as it
was among the Red Indians and the primitive Celts, and indeed generally
everywhere in the early days of Europe. Their weapons were the spear or
assagai, and a sort of wooden club, occasionally a crescent-shaped
battle-axe, and still less frequently the bow. Horses were unknown, for
the ox, sheep, goat and dog were over all South Africa the only
domesticated quadrupeds. One tribe, however, the Basutos, now breeds
horses extensively, and has turned them to account in fighting. The
rapid movement of their mounted warriors was one of the chief
difficulties the colonial forces had to deal with in the last Basuto
war. The courage in war which distinguished the tribes of Zulu and Kosa
race was all the more creditable because it had not, like that of the
Mohammedan dervishes of the Sudan, or of Mohammedans anywhere engaged in
a _jehad_, a religious motive and the promise of future bliss behind it.
The British army has encountered no more daring or formidable enemies.
Nine wars were needed to subjugate the Kafirs of the southern coast,
although till recently they had few firearms. But the natives had no
idea of the tactics needed in facing a civilized foe. As in their
battles with the Boers they were destroyed by the fire of horsemen
riding up, delivering a volley, and riding off before an assagai could
reach them, so in the great war with Cetewayo in 1879 they fought in the
open and were mowed down by British volleys; and in 1893 the Matabili
perished in the same way under the fire of riflemen and Maxim guns
sheltered behind a laager of wagons.

Religion was a powerful factor in Kafir life; but religion did not mean
the worship of any deity, for there was no deity. Still less had it any
moral significance. To the Kafirs, as to most savage races, the world
was full of spirits--spirits of the rivers, the mountains, and the
woods. Most important were the ghosts of the dead, who had power to
injure or to help the living, and who were therefore propitiated by
offerings at stated periods, as well as on occasions when their aid was
specially desired. This kind of worship, the worship once most generally
diffused throughout the world, and which held its ground among the
Greeks and Italians in the most flourishing period of ancient
civilization, as it does in China and Japan to-day, was and is virtually
the religion of the Kafirs. It