IV.] THE AFRICAN NEGRO: II. IOI 



that it is sometimes far from the almost ideal standard of beauty 

 with which some early observers have credited them. 



Mentally the Zulu-Xosas stand much higher than the true 

 Negro, as shown especially in their political organi- 

 sation, which, before the development of Dingis- organisation 

 wayo's military system under European influences, 

 was a kind of patriarchal monarchy controlled by a powerful 

 aristocracy. The nation was grouped in tribes connected by the 

 ties of blood and ruled by the hereditary inkose, or feudal chief, 

 who was supreme, with power of life and death, within his own 

 jurisdiction. Against his mandates, however, the nobles could 

 protest in council, and it was in fact their decisions that estab- 

 lished precedents and the traditional code of common 

 law. "This common law is well adapted to a people Law" 

 in a rude state of society. It holds everyone accused 

 of crime guilty unless he can prove himself innocent ; it makes 

 the head of the family responsible for the conduct of all its 

 branches, the village collectively for all resident in it, and the 

 clan for each of its villages. For the administration of the law 

 there are courts of various grades, from any of which an appeal 

 may be taken to the Supreme Council, presided over by the 

 paramount chief, who is not only the ruler but also the father 

 of the people 1 ." 



In the interior, between the southern coast ranges and the 

 Zambesi, the Hottentot and Bushman aborigines 



Mashonas 



were in prehistoric ages almost everywhere dis- and Maka- 

 placed or reduced to servitude by other Bantu 

 peoples, such as the Makalakas and Mashonas, the Bechuanas 

 and the kindred Basutos. Of these the first arrivals (from the 

 north) appear to have been the Mashonas and Makalakas, 

 who were being slowly " eaten up " by the Matabili when the 

 process was arrested by the timely intervention of the English in 

 Rhodesia. 



Both nations are industrious tillers of the soil, skilled in metal- 

 work and in mining operations, being probably the 

 direct descendants cf the natives, whose great chief r < he M ,, no ~, 



motapa M ytn. 



Monomotapa, i.e. "Lord of the Mines," as I interpret 

 1 Rev. J. Macdonald, Light in Africa, p. 194. 



