ZOOLOOS. 



881 



sailora who had been cast ashore in St. Lucia 

 Bay, who told him of the deeds of Napoleon, 

 then at the height of his power in Lurope. 

 Young Chttka listened attentively, and resolved 

 to become the African Napoleon. Upon the 

 death of his father ho became ruling chief 

 after turning out one of his half-brothers. 

 A large portion of the Umtetwas, desiring a 

 more warlike policy than that of their own 

 ruler, joined the Zooloos. Chaka now entered 

 upon an unchecked career of conquest. The 

 whole male population of the Zooloo nation 

 was subject to compulsory military service. 

 He created an imperial guard of twelve or fif- 

 teen thousand prime warriors, who were kept 

 ready at an hour's notice to inarch fifty miles 

 in any direction without a halt, and to destroy 

 a town, a chief, or a tribe in two or three days. 

 He built numerous fortified kraals to be occu- 

 pied as permanent camps by as many regiments 

 of his army. The troops were drilled in a sys- 

 tem of manoeuvres not before practiced by Af- 

 rican soldiers. By these means he succeeded 

 in establishing the most formidable military 

 power that has been wielded in modern times 

 by any native African monarch. With this 

 power he conquered all the surrounding coun- 

 tries, extending his sway from the Limpopo 

 in the north to the St. John's River in the 

 south. There were few or no Europeans in 

 those parts. As for the natives, they were 

 either entirely destroyed the work of exter- 

 mination being carried on so successfully that 

 when the Dutch Boers came to Natal, in 1837, 

 they found that country quite empty or he 

 obliged the conquered nations to take the name 

 Zooloo, and to form part of the new com- 

 pact and rigidly governed nation over which 

 he ruled. The people of various tribes were 

 divided up, and distributed here and there, in 

 order to efface their original connections. Fifty 

 or sixty tribes were thus dealt with in the 

 course of Chaka's reign, and of these about 

 forty have been resuscitated to a certain degree 

 by collecting their survivors under British pro- 

 tection in Natal. His reign, as may be readily 

 conceived, was marked by the most unheard- 

 of cruelties, whole regiments with their wives 

 and children being massacred in punishment 

 for having suffered defeat. It was one of these 

 outbursts of cruelty that cost Chaka his life. 

 A regiment which he had sent out against one 



of his neighbors having been unsuccessful, he 

 determined to punish them by murdering some 

 two thousand wives they had left at home. 

 Among these were the wives of two of bin 

 brothers, Dingaan and Umhlangane, and they 

 in revenge hired one of his attendants to mar- 

 tier Chaka. This deed was performed on Sep- 

 tember 23, 1828, and Dingaan, having mur- 

 dered his other brother a few days after, as- 

 cended the throne. His reign from 1828 to 

 1840 was different from that of Chaka, inas- 

 much as he did not pretend to be a great war- 

 rior. But his government at home was cruel- 

 ly tyrannical, and large numbers of his mis- 

 erable subjects fied the kingdom to escape its 

 merciless law, thousands going to Natal, where 

 the British coast settlement at Durban had 

 been founded in 1835. In 1838 the Boers 

 came to the country, and a terrible massacre 

 of them took place. For a time Dingaan was 

 even successful against the Dutch and British 

 in Natal and on the Orange and Vaal Rivers; 

 but in February, 1840, he was disastrously de- 

 feated and killed. This defeat was mostly due 

 to the defection of his brother Panda, who 

 now ascended the throne and ruled until 1872. 

 The rule of Panda was, according to Sir The- 

 ophilus Shepstone, " incomparably milder and 

 more merciful " than that of Dingaan, which 

 was principally due to the influence of the 

 Dutch Boers. During his entire reign he re- 

 garded them with " feelings of grateful attach- 

 ment and loyalty." His kingdom was tolerably 

 quiet, as the systematic despotism established 

 by his predecessors had effectually suppressed 

 all internal disaffection, while the new Euro- 

 pean colonists on his borders were contented 

 to let him alone. The history of Panda's re- 

 lations with his neighbors is the same as that 

 of the Boers and of the different British prov- 

 inces of South Africa. Upon his death in 

 1872 he was succeeded by his son Cetywayo, 

 who was installed by Sir Theophilus Shepstone, 

 the Secretary for Native Affairs of Natal. King 

 Cetywayo, upon whose accession great hopes 

 had been built, early showed that he was ani- 

 mated by the same sanguinary and despotic 

 spirit as his predecessors Chaka and Dingaan, 

 and he soon came into conflict with his neigh- 

 bors, which eventually resulted in war. (For 

 an account of these difficulties and the war, 

 see GAPE COLONY.) 



