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132 THE TALE OF ISANDHLWANA AND RORKE'S DRIFT

LTHOUGH but fourteen years have gone by since 1879, perhaps some people, if they chance to be young, have forgotten about the Zulus, and the story of our war with them; so, before beginning the tale of Isandhlwana and Rorke's Drift, it may be worth while to tell of these matters in a few words.

The Zulus live in South-Eastern Africa. Originally they were not one tribe but many, though the same blood was in them all. Nobody knows whence they came or who were their forefathers; but they seem to have sprung from an Arab or Semitic stock, and many of their customs, such as the annual feast of the first fruits, resemble those of the Jews. At the beginning of this century there arose a warrior king, called Chaka, who gathered up the scattered tribes of the Zulus as a woodman gathers sticks, and as of the frail brushwood the woodman makes a stout faggot, that none can break, so of these tribes Chaka fashioned a nation so powerful that no other black people could conquer it.

The deeds of Chaka are too many to write of here. Seldom has there been a monarch, black or white, so terrible or so absolute, and never perhaps has a man lived more wicked or more clever. Out of 'nothing,' as the Kafirs say, he made the Amazulu, or the 'people