98 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



Beyond Sofala we enter the domain of the Ama-Zulu, the 

 Ama-Xosa, and others whom I have collectively 

 xJsas Zuk called Znlu-Xosas\ and who are in some respects 

 the most remarkable ethnical group in all Bantu- 

 land. Indeed they are by common consent regarded as Bantus 

 in a preeminent sense, and this conventional term Bantu itself 

 is taken from their typical Bantu language 2 . There is clear 

 evidence that they are comparatively recent arrivals, necessarily 

 from the north, in their present territory, which was still occupied 

 by Bushman and Hottentot tribes probably within the last 

 thousand years or so. Before the Kafir wars 



Former and 



Present with the English (1811 77) this territory extended 



much farther round the coast than at present, and 

 for many years the Great Kei River has formed the frontier 

 between the white settlements and the Xosas. 



But what they have lost in this direction the Zulu-Xosas, or at 

 least the Zulus, have recovered a hundredfold by their expansion 

 northwards during the iQth century. After the establishment of 

 the Zulu military power under Dingiswayo and his successor 

 Chaka (1793 1828), half the continent was overrun by organised 

 Zulu hordes, who ranged nearly as far north as Lake Victoria, 

 and in many places founded more or less unstable kingdoms or 

 chieftaincies on the model of the terrible despotism set up in 

 Zululand. Such were, beyond the Limpopo, the states of Gaza- 

 land and Matabililand, the latter established about 1838 by 



1 In preference to the more popular form Zulu- Kafir, where Kafir is 

 merely the Arabic " Infidel " applied indiscriminately to any people rejecting 

 Islam; hence the Siah Posh Kafirs ("Black-clad Infidels") of Afghanistan ; 

 the Kiifra oasis in the Sahara, where Ktifra, plural of Kafir, refers to the 

 pagan Tibus of that district and the Kafirs generally of the East African 

 seaboard. But according to English usage Zulu is applied to the northern 

 part of the territory, mainly Zululand proper and Natal, while Kafirland or 

 Kaffraria is restricted to the southern section between Natal and the Great 

 Kei River. The bulk of these southern " Kafirs" belong to the Xosa connec- 

 tion ; hence this term takes the place of Kafir, in the compound expression 

 Zulu-Xosa. Ama is explained in Eth. p. 272, and the X of Xosa represents 

 an unpronounceable combination of a guttural and a lateral click, this with two 

 other clicks (a dental and a palatal) having infected the speech of these Bantus 

 during their long prehistoric wars with the Hottentots. 



2 Eth. p. 271. 



