Nada the Lily | Page 9

die and
follow the road that Nada trod. Perhaps I have lived to tell you this tale,
my father, that you may repeat it to the white men if you will. How old

am I? Nay, I do not know. Very, very old. Had Chaka lived he would
have been as old as I.[2] None are living whom I knew when I was a
boy. I am so old that I must hasten. The grass withers, and the winter
comes. Yes, while I speak the winter nips my heart. Well, I am ready to
sleep in the cold, and perhaps I shall awake again in the spring.
[2] This would have made him nearly a hundred years old, an age
rarely attained by a native. The writer remembers talking to an aged
Zulu woman, however, who told him that she was married when Chaka
was king.--ED.
Before the Zulus were a people--for I will begin at the beginning--I was
born of the Langeni tribe. We were not a large tribe; afterwards, all our
able-bodied men numbered one full regiment in Chaka's army, perhaps
there were between two and three thousand of them, but they were
brave. Now they are all dead, and their women and children with
them,--that people is no more. It is gone like last month's moon; how it
went I will tell you by-and-bye.
Our tribe lived in a beautiful open country; the Boers, whom we call
the Amaboona, are there now, they tell me. My father, Makedama, was
chief of the tribe, and his kraal was built on the crest of a hill, but I was
not the son of his head wife. One evening, when I was still little,
standing as high as a man's elbow only, I went out with my mother
below the cattle kraal to see the cows driven in. My mother was very
fond of these cows, and there was one with a white face that would
follow her about. She carried my little sister Baleka riding on her hip;
Baleka was a baby then. We walked till we met the lads driving in the
cows. My mother called the white-faced cow and gave it mealie leaves
which she had brought with her. Then the boys went on with the cattle,
but the white-faced cow stopped by my mother. She said that she
would bring it to the kraal when she came home. My mother sat down
on the grass and nursed her baby, while I played round her, and the cow
grazed. Presently we saw a woman walking towards us across the plain.
She walked like one who is tired. On her back was a bundle of mats,
and she led by the hand a boy of about my own age, but bigger and
stronger than I was. We waited a long while, till at last the woman

came up to us and sank down on the veldt, for she was very weary. We
saw by the way her hair was dressed that she was not of our tribe.
"Greeting to you!" said the woman.
"Good-morrow!" answered my mother. "What do you seek?"
"Food, and a hut to sleep in," said the woman. "I have travelled far."
"How are you named?--and what is your people?" asked my mother.
"My name is Unandi: I am the wife of Senzangacona, of the Zulu
tribe," said the stranger.
Now there had been war between our people and the Zulu people, and
Senzangacona had killed some of our warriors and taken many of our
cattle. So, when my mother heard the speech of Unandi she sprang up
in anger.
"You dare to come here and ask me for food and shelter, wife of a dog
of a Zulu!" she cried; "begone, or I will call the girls to whip you out of
our country."
The woman, who was very handsome, waited till my mother had
finished her angry words; then she looked up and spoke slowly, "There
is a cow by you with milk dropping from its udder; will you not even
give me and my boy a gourd of milk?" And she took a gourd from her
bundle and held it towards us.
"I will not," said my mother.
"We are thirsty with long travel; will you not, then, give us a cup of
water? We have found none for many hours."
"I will not, wife of a dog; go and seek water for yourself."
The woman's eyes filled with tears, but the boy folded his arms on his
breast and scowled. He was a very handsome boy, with bright black
eyes, but when he scowled his eyes were like the sky before a

thunderstorm.
"Mother," he said, "we are not wanted here any more than we were
wanted yonder," and he nodded towards the country