Nada the Lily | Page 4

last time, from far across the seas I
speak to you, and lifting my hand I give your "Sibonga"[2] and that
royal salute, to which, now that its kings are gone and the "People of
Heaven" are no more a nation, with Her Majesty you are alone
entitled:--
Bayete! Baba, Nkosi ya makosi! Ngonyama! Indhlovu ai pendulwa!
Wen' o wa vela wasi pata! Wen' o wa hlul' izizwe zonke za patwa
nguive! Wa geina nge la Mabun' o wa ba hlul' u yedwa! Umsizi we
zintandane e ziblupekayo! Si ya kuleka Baba! Bayete, T' Sompseu![3]

and farewell!
H. RIDER HAGGARD.
To Sir Theophilus Shepstone, K.C.M.G., Natal. 13 September, 1891.
[1] "I thank my father Sompseu for his message. I am glad that he has
sent it, because the Dutch have tired me out, and I intended to fight
them once and once only, and to drive them over the Vaal. Kabana, you
see my impis are gathered. It was to fight the Dutch I called them
together; now I send them back to their homes." --Message from
Cetywayo to Sir. T. Shepstone, April, 1877.
[2] Titles of praise.
[3] Bayete, Father, Chief of Chiefs! Lion! Elephant that is not turned!
You who nursed us from of old! You who overshadowed all peoples
and took charge of them, And ended by mastering the Boers with your
single strength! Help of the fatherless when in trouble! Salutation to
you, Father! Bayete, O Sompseu!

PREFACE
The writer of this romance has been encouraged to his task by a
purpose somewhat beyond that of setting out a wild tale of savage life.
When he was yet a lad,--now some seventeen years ago,--fortune took
him to South Africa. There he was thrown in with men who, for thirty
or forty years, had been intimately acquainted with the Zulu people,
with their history, their heroes, and their customs. From these he heard
many tales and traditions, some of which, perhaps, are rarely told
nowadays, and in time to come may cease to be told altogether. Then
the Zulus were still a nation; now that nation has been destroyed, and
the chief aim of its white rulers is to root out the warlike spirit for
which it was remarkable, and to replace it by a spirit of peaceful
progress. The Zulu military organisation, perhaps the most wonderful
that the world has seen, is already a thing of the past; it perished at
Ulundi. It was Chaka who invented that organisation, building it up

from the smallest beginnings. When he appeared at the commencement
of this century, it was as the ruler of a single small tribe; when he fell,
in the year 1828, beneath the assegais of his brothers, Umhlangana and
Dingaan, and of his servant, Mopo or Umbopo, as he is called also, all
south-eastern Africa was at his feet, and in his march to power he had
slaughtered more than a million human beings. An attempt has been
made in these pages to set out the true character of this colossal genius
and most evil man,--a Napoleon and a Tiberiius in one,--and also that
of his brother and successor, Dingaan, so no more need be said of them
here. The author's aim, moreover, has been to convey, in a narrative
form, some idea of the remarkable spirit which animated these kings
and their subjects, and to make accessible, in a popular shape, incidents
of history which are now, for the most part, only to be found in a few
scarce works of reference, rarely consulted, except by students. It will
be obvious that such a task has presented difficulties, since he who
undertakes it must for a time forget his civilisation, and think with the
mind and speak with the voice of a Zulu of the old regime. All the
horrors perpetrated by the Zulu tyrants cannot be published in this
polite age of melanite and torpedoes; their details have, therefore, been
suppressed. Still much remains, and those who think it wrong that
massacre and fighting should be written of,--except by special
correspondents,--or that the sufferings of mankind beneath one of the
world's most cruel tyrannies should form the groundwork of romance,
may be invited to leave this book unread. Most, indeed nearly all, of the
historical incidents here recorded are substantially true. Thus, it is said
that Chaka did actually kill his mother, Unandi, for the reason given,
and destroy an entire tribe in the Tatiyana cleft, and that he prophesied
of the coming of the white man after receiving his death wounds. Of
the incident of the Missionary and the furnace of logs, it is impossible
to speak so certainly. It came to the writer from the lips of an old
traveller in "the Zulu"; but he cannot discover any confirmation of it.
Still,