40 NATURAL HISTORY ESSAYS 



perhaps realising that domestic cattle were easier to 

 find than carrion, and less trouble than hunting buck. 

 Not only sheep, but calves were killed by the strand- 

 wolves, and even men were not safe from molestation ; 

 unfortunately, the hyaenas were found to be by no 

 means confined to the coast, being quite abundant 

 far inland. Dogs and firearms were freely used 

 against the depredators, so that it was presently 

 noticed that the strandwolves near the Cape were 

 less bold than those further afield; but Lieutenant 

 Moodie, as late as 1835, states that they seemed to 

 increase with the population, their long dismal howls 

 being answered every night by the farm dogs. 1 



The hyaenas of the interior had a terrible reason 

 for their boldness. During a period of many years 

 the monster Chaka, king of the Zulus, had ravaged 

 the country with his sable battalions; the idea of this 

 black Napoleon being to unite his rabble forces into 

 one formidable army which would make him ''master 

 of the world." His troops consisted of one hundred 

 thousand men ; fifty thousand of these, marshalled 

 into regiments, were kept constantly under arms. 

 Every spring Chaka loosed his human tigers upon 

 neighbouring tribes in a savage war of extermination ; 

 kept to their work by the severest discipline, the 

 warriors invaded, routed and massacred throughout 



1. "Valour and a whole skin" seems to have been the motto of the 

 hyaenas. Steedman relates that on one occasion these brutes, though 

 whooping all night round a cattle kraal, were prevented from attacking 

 by the incessant barking of the dogs. 



