SOUTHERN AFRICA. 77 



CHAPTER XII. 



HISTORY OF CHAKA^ SURNAMED " THE BLOODY." 



IjUT Moselekatse, with his interminable catalog-ue of crime, 

 is no more than a hmnble follower in the reeking- footsteps 

 of Chaka, ^ptl.y surnamed " the Bloody/' from whose stand- 

 ard it has already been seen he revolted, and whose throne 

 Ding-aan has usurped. The reig-n of that inhuman despot, 

 of whose singular career I purpose g"iving' a brief outline,* 

 was stained by a succession of enormities of so deep a d3'e 

 that the blood curdles in the recital. Even in the annals 

 of savag'e nations his atrocities stand forth pre-eminent. He 

 was a fiend in human form, to whose vices and crimes 

 history, neither ancient nor modern, can furnish the 

 slig'htest pnrallel. 



The family of this monster, whose name in the Sichuana 

 lano-uao-e sio-nifies " The battle-axe," \\ as ever remarkable for 

 its conquests, cruelty, and ambition, and emerg-ed from a tribe 

 orig-inaUy inhabiting* a district about Delag'oa Bay, of which 

 tradition informs us the first king- was named Zoola. Essen- 

 zinconyarna, the father of Chaka, made his way from the 

 primitive location of his ancestors to the Umferoche Um- 

 slopie, or \^•hite river (a branch of the river St. Lucie), and/^ 

 colonizing" within sixty miles of the coast kept the neig'h- 

 bouring' tribes in terror and subjection. In addition to 

 thirty wives, he was possessed of concubines without num- 

 ber, and had many children, but from peculiar circumstances 

 attending- the bu'th of the infant Chaka, it was esteemed a 



* Collected cliieflj from l!?aac's Travels in Eastern Africa, 



