appealing to him for support. Now when Sir Henry had caught
her eye and she had blushed so rosy red, I had seen that the
incident had not escaped this man's notice, and, what is more,
that it was eminently disagreeable to him, for he bit his lip
and his hand tightened on his sword-hilt. Afterwards we learnt
that he was an aspirant for the hand of this Queen in marriage,
which accounted for it. This being so, Nyleptha could not have
appealed to a worse person, for, speaking in slow, heavy tones,
he appeared to confirm all that the High Priest Agon had said.
As he spoke, Sorais put her elbow on her knee, and, resting
her chin on her hand, looked at him with a suppressed smile upon
her lips, as though she saw through the man, and was determined
to be his match; but Nyleptha grew very angry, her cheek flushed,
her eyes flashed, and she did indeed look lovely. Finally she
turned to Agon and seemed to give some sort of qualified assent,
for he bowed at her words; and as she spoke she moved her hands
as though to emphasize what she said; while all the time Sorais
kept her chin on her hand and smiled. Then suddenly Nyleptha
made a sign, the trumpets blew again, and everybody rose to leave
the hall save ourselves and the guards, whom she motioned to stay.
When they were all gone she bent forward and, smiling sweetly,
partially by signs and partially by exclamations made it clear
to us that she was very anxious to know where we came from.
The difficulty was how to explain, but at last an idea struck
me. I had my large pocket-book in my pocket and a pencil. Taking
it out, I made a little sketch of a lake, and then as best I
could I drew the underground river and the lake at the other
end. When I had done this I advanced to the steps of the throne
and gave it to her. She understood it at once and clapped her
hands with delight, and then descending from the throne took
it to her sister Sorais, who also evidently understood. Next
she took the pencil from me, and after examining it with curiosity
proceeded to make a series of delightful little sketches, the
first representing herself holding out both hands in welcome,
and a man uncommonly like Sir Henry taking them. Next she drew
a lovely little picture of a hippopotamus rolling about dying
in the water, and of an individual, in whom we had no difficulty
in recognizing Agon the High Priest, holding up his hands in
horror on the bank. Then followed a most alarming picture of
a dreadful fiery furnace and of the same figure, Agon, poking
us into it with a forked stick. This picture perfectly horrified
me, but I was a little reassured when she nodded sweetly and
proceeded to make a fourth drawing - a man again uncommonly
like Sir Henry, and of two women, in whom I recognized Sorais
and herself, each with one arm around him, and holding a sword
in protection over him. To all of these Sorais, who I saw was
employed in carefully taking us all in - especially Curtis -
signified her approval by nodding.
At last Nyleptha drew a final sketch of a rising sun, indicating
that she must go, and that we should meet on the following morning;
whereat Sir Henry looked so disappointed that she saw it, and,
I suppose by way of consolation, extended her hand to him to
kiss, which he did with pious fervour. At the same time Sorais,
off whom Good had never taken his eyeglass during the whole indaba
[interview], rewarded him by giving him her hand to kiss, though,
while she did so, her eyes were fixed upon Sir Henry. I am glad
to say that I was not implicated in these proceedings; neither
of them gave _me_ her hand to kiss.
Then Nyleptha turned and addressed the man who appeared to be
in command of the bodyguard, apparently from her manner and his
frequent obeisances, giving him very stringent and careful orders;
after which, with a somewhat coquettish nod and smile, she left
the hall, followed by Sorais and most of the guards.
When the Queens had gone, the officer whom Nyleptha had addressed
came forward and with many tokens of deep respect led us from
the hall through various passages to a sumptuous set of apartments
opening out of a large central room lighted with brazen swinging
lamps (for it was now dusk) and richly carpeted and strewn with
couches. On a table in the centre of the room was set a profusion
of food and fruit, and, what is more, flowers. There was a delicious
wine also in ancient-looking sealed earthenware flagons, and
beautifully chased golden and ivory cups to drink it from. Servants,
male and female, also were there to minister to us, and whilst
we ate, from some recess outside the apartment
'The silver lute did speak between
The trumpet's lordly blowing;'
and altogether we found ourselves in a sort of earthly paradise
which was only disturbed by the vision of that disgusting High
Priest who intended to commit us to the flames. But so very
weary were we with our labours that we could scarcely keep ourselves
awake through the sumptuous meal, and as soon as it was over
we indicated that we desired to sleep. As a further precaution
against surprise we left Umslopogaas with his axe to sleep in
the main chamber near the curtained doorways leading to the apartments
which we occupied respectively, Good and I in the one, and Sir
Henry and Alphonse in the other. Then throwing off our clothes,
with the exception of the mail shirts, which we considered it
safer to keep on, we flung ourselves down upon the low and luxurious
couches, and drew the silk-embroidered coverlids over us.
In two minutes I was just dropping off when I was aroused by
Good's voice.
'I say, Quatermain,' he said, 'did you ever see such eyes?'
'Eyes!' I said, crossly; 'what eyes?'
'Why, the Queen's, of course! Sorais, I mean - at least
I think that is her name.'
'Oh, I don't know,' I yawned; 'I didn't notice them much:
I suppose they are good eyes,' and again I dropped off.
Five minutes or so elapsed, and I was once more awakened.
'I say, Quatermain,' said the voice.
'Well,' I answered testily, 'what is it now?'
'Did you notice her ankle? The shape - '
This was more than I could stand. By my bed stood the veldtschoons
I had been wearing. Moved quite beyond myself, I took them up
and threw them straight at Good's head - and hit it.
Afterwards I slept the sleep of the just, and a very heavy sleep
it must be. As for Good, I don't know if he went to sleep or
if he continued to pass Sorais' beauties in mental review, and,
what is more, I don't care.
CHAPTER XIII
ABOUT THE ZU-VENDI PEOPLE
And now the curtain is down for a few hours, and the actors in
this novel drama are plunged in dewy sleep. Perhaps we should
except Nyleptha, whom the reader may, if poetically inclined,
imagine lying in her bed of state encompassed by her maidens,
tiring women, guards, and all the other people and appurtenances
that surround a throne, and yet not able to slumber for thinking
of the strangers who had visited a country where no such strangers
had ever come before, and wondering, as she lay awake, who they
were and what their past has been, and if she was ugly compared
to the women of their native place. I, however, not being poetically
inclined, will take advantage of the lull to give some account
of the people among whom we found ourselves, compiled, needless
to state, from information which we subsequently collected.
The name of this country, to begin at the beginning, is Zu-Vendis,
from Zu, 'yellow', and Vendis, 'place or country'. Why it is
called the Yellow Country I have never been able to ascertain
accurately, nor do the inhabitants themselves know. Three reasons
are, however, given, each of which would suffice to account for
it. The first is that the name owes its origin to the great
quantity of gold that is found in the land. Indeed, in this
respect Zu-Vendis is a veritable Eldorado, the precious metal
being extraordinarily plentiful. At present it is collected
from purely alluvial diggings, which we subsequently inspected,
and which are situated within a day's journey from Milosis, being
mostly found in pockets and in nuggets weighing from an ounce
up to six or seven pounds in weight. But other diggings of a
similar nature are known to exist, and I have besides seen great
veins of gold-bearing quartz. In Zu-Vendis gold is a much commoner
metal than silver, and thus it has curiously enough come to pass
that silver is the legal tender of the country.
The second reason given is, that at certain times of the year
the native grasses of the country, which are very sweet and good,
turn as yellow as ripe corn; and the third arises from a tradition
that the people were originally yellow skinned, but grew white
after living for many generations upon these high lands. Zu-Vendis
is a country about the size of France, is, roughly speaking,
oval in shape; and on every side cut off from the surrounding
territory by illimitable forests of impenetrable thorn, beyond
which are said to be hundreds of miles of morasses, deserts,
and great mountains. It is, in short, a huge, high tableland
rising up in the centre of the dark continent, much as in southern
Africa flat-topped mountains rise from the level of the surrounding
veldt. Milosis itself lies, according to my aneroid, at a level
of about nine thousand feet above the sea, but most of the land
is even higher, the greatest elevation of the open country being,
I believe, about eleven thousand feet. As a consequence the
climate is, comparatively speaking, a cold one, being very similar
to that of southern England, only brighter and not so rainy.
The land is, however, exceedingly fertile, and grows all cereals
and temperate fruits and timber to perfection; and in the lower-lying
parts even produces a hardy variety of sugar-cane. Coal is found
in great abundance, and in many places crops out from the surface;
and so is pure marble, both black and white. The same may be
said of almost every metal except silver, which is scarce, and
only to be obtained from a range of mountains in the north.
Zu-Vendis comprises in her boundaries a great variety of scenery,
including two ranges of snow-clad mountains, one on the western
boundary beyond the impenetrable belt of thorn forest, and the
other piercing the country from north to south, and passing at
a distance of about eighty miles from Milosis, from which town
its higher peaks are distinctly visible. This range forms the
chief watershed of the land. There are also three large lakes
- the biggest, namely that whereon we emerged, and which is
named Milosis after the city, covering some two hundred square
miles of country - and numerous small ones, some of them salt.
The population of this favoured land is, comparatively speaking,
dense, numbering at a rough estimate from ten to twelve millions.
It is almost purely agricultural in its habits, and divided
into great classes as in civilized countries. There is a territorial
nobility, a considerable middle class, formed principally of
merchants, officers of the army, etc.; but the great bulk of
the people are well-to-do peasants who live upon the lands of
the lords, from whom they hold under a species of feudal tenure.
The best bred people in the country are, as I think I have said,
pure whites with a somewhat southern cast of countenance; but
the common herd are much darker, though they do not show any
negro or other African characteristics. As to their descent
I can give no certain information. Their written records, which
extend back for about a thousand years, give no hint of it.
One very ancient chronicler does indeed, in alluding to some
old tradition that existed in his day, talk of it as having probably
originally 'come down with the people from the coast', but that
may mean little or nothing. In short, the origin of the Zu-Vendi
is lost in the mists of time. Whence they came or of what race
they are no man knows. Their architecture and some of their
sculptures suggest an Egyptian or possibly an Assyrian origin;
but it is well known that their present remarkable style of building
has only sprung up within the last eight hundred years, and they
certainly retain no traces of Egyptian theology or customs.
Again, their appearance and some of their habits are rather Jewish;
but here again it seems hardly conceivable that they should have
utterly lost all traces of the Jewish religion. Still, for aught
I know, they may be one of the lost ten tribes whom people are
so fond of discovering all over the world, or they may not.
I do not know, and so can only describe them as I find them,
and leave wiser heads than mine to make what they can out of
it, if indeed this account should ever be read at all, which
is exceedingly doubtful.
And now after I have said all this, I am, after all, going to
hazard a theory of my own, though it is only a very little one,
as the young lady said in mitigation of her baby. This theory
is founded on a legend which I have heard among the Arabs on
the east coast, which is to the effect that 'more than two thousand
years ago' there were troubles in the country which was known
as Babylonia, and that thereon a vast horde of Persians came
down to Bushire, where they took ship and were driven by the
north-east monsoon to the east coast of Africa, where, according
to the legend, 'the sun and fire worshippers' fell into conflict
with the belt of Arab settlers who even then were settled on
the east coast, and finally broke their way through them, and,
vanishing into the interior, were no more seen. Now, I ask,
is it not at least possible that the Zu-Vendi people are the
descendants of these 'sun and fire worshippers' who broke through
the Arabs and vanished? As a matter of fact, there is a good
deal in their characters and customs that tallies with the somewhat
vague ideas that I have of Persians. Of course we have no books
of reference here, but Sir Henry says that if his memory does
not fail him, there was a tremendous revolt in Babylon about
500 BC, whereon a vast multitude were expelled from the city.
Anyhow, it is a well-established fact that there have been many
separate emigrations of Persians from the Persian Gulf to the
east coast of Africa up to as lately as seven hundred years ago.
There are Persian tombs at Kilwa, on the east coast, still in
good repair, which bear dates showing them to be just seven hundred
years old. {Endnote 12}
In addition to being an agricultural people, the Zu-Vendi are,
oddly enough, excessively warlike, and as they cannot from the
exigencies of their position make war upon other nations, they
fight among each other like the famed Kilkenny cats, with the
happy result that the population never outgrows the power of
the country to support it. This habit of theirs is largely fostered
by the political condition of the country. The monarchy is nominally
an absolute one, save in so far as it is tempered by the power
of the priests and the informal council of the great lords; but,
as in many other institutions, the king's writ does not run unquestioned
throughout the length and breadth of the land. In short, the
whole system is a purely feudal one (though absolute serfdom
or slavery is unknown), all the great lords holding nominally
from the throne, but a number of them being practically independent,
having the power of life and death, waging war against and making
peace with their neighbours as the whim or their interests lead
them, and even on occasion rising in open rebellion against their
royal master or mistress, and, safely shut up in their castles
and fenced cities, as far from the seat of government, successfully
defying them for years.
Zu-Vendis has had its king-makers as well as England, a fact
that will be well appreciated when I state that eight different
dynasties have sat upon the throne in the last one thousand years,
every one of which took its rise from some noble family that
succeeded in grasping the purple after a sanguinary struggle.
At the date of our arrival in the country things were a little
better than they had been for some centuries, the last king,
the father of Nyleptha and Sorais, having been an exceptionally
able and vigorous ruler, and, as a consequence, he kept down
the power of the priests and nobles. On his death, two years
before we reached Zu-Vendis, the twin sisters, his children,
were, following an ancient precedent, called to the throne, since
an attempt to exclude either would instantly have provoked a
sanguinary civil war; but it was generally felt in the country
that this measure was a most unsatisfactory one, and could hardly
be expected to be permanent. Indeed, as it was, the various
intrigues that were set on foot by ambitious nobles to obtain
the hand of one or other of the queens in marriage had disquieted
the country, and the general opinion was that there would be
bloodshed before long.
I will now pass on to the question of the Zu-Vendi religion,
which is nothing more or less than sun-worship of a pronounced
and highly developed character. Around this sun-worship is grouped
the entire social system of the Zu-Vendi. It sends its roots
through every institution and custom of the land. From the cradle
to the grave the Zu-Vendi follows the sun in every sense of the
saying. As an infant he is solemnly held up in its light and
dedicated to 'the symbol of good, the expression of power, and
the hope of Eternity', the ceremony answering to our baptism.
Whilst still a tiny child, his parents point out the glorious
orb as the presence of a visible and beneficent god, and he worships
it at its up-rising and down-setting. Then when still quite
small, he goes, holding fast to the pendent end of his mother's
'kaf' (toga), up to the temple of the Sun of the nearest city,
and there, when at midday the bright beams strike down upon the
golden central altar and beat back the fire that burns thereon,
he hears the white-robed priests raise their solemn chant of
praise and sees the people fall down to adore, and then, amidst
the blowing of the golden trumpets, watches the sacrifice thrown
into the fiery furnace beneath the altar. Here he comes again
to be declared 'a man' by the priests, and consecrated to war
and to good works; here before the solemn altar he leads his
bride; and here too, if differences shall unhappily arise, he
divorces her.
And so on, down life's long pathway till the last mile is travelled,
and he comes again armed indeed, and with dignity, but no longer
a man. Here they bear him dead and lay his bier upon the falling
brazen doors before the eastern altar, and when the last ray
from the setting sun falls upon his white face the bolts are
drawn and he vanishes into the raging furnace beneath and is ended.
The priests of the Sun do not marry, but are recruited as young
men specially devoted to the work by their parents and supported
by the State. The nomination to the higher offices of the priesthood
lies with the Crown, but once appointed the nominees cannot be
dispossessed, and it is scarcely too much to say that they really
rule the land. To begin with, they are a united body sworn to
obedience and secrecy, so that an order issued by the High Priest
at Milosis will be instantly and unhesitatingly acted upon by
the resident priest of a little country town three or four hundred
miles off. They are the judges of the land, criminal and civil,
an appeal lying only to the lord paramount of the district, and
from him to the king; and they have, of course, practically unlimited
jurisdiction over religious and moral offences, together with
a right of excommunication, which, as in the faiths of more highly
civilized lands, is a very effective weapon. Indeed, their rights
and powers are almost unlimited, but I may as well state here
that the priests of the Sun are wise in their generation, and
do not push things too far. It is but very seldom that they
go to extremes against anybody, being more inclined to exercise
the prerogative of mercy than run the risk of exasperating the
powerful and vigorous-minded people on whose neck they have set
their yoke, lest it should rise and break it off altogether.
Another source of the power of the priests is their practical
monopoly of learning, and their very considerable astronomical
knowledge, which enables them to keep a hold on the popular mind
by predicting eclipses and even comets. In Zu-Vendis only a
few of the upper classes can read and write, but nearly all the
priests have this knowledge, and are therefore looked upon as
learned men.
The law of the country is, on the whole, mild and just, but differs
in several respects from our civilized law. For instance, the
law of England is much more severe upon offences against property
than against the person, as becomes a people whose ruling passion
is money. A man may half kick his wife to death or inflict horrible
sufferings upon his children at a much cheaper rate of punishment
than he can compound for the theft of a pair of old boots.
In Zu-Vendis this is not so, for there they rightly or wrongly look
upon the person as of more consequence than goods and chattels,
and not, as in England, as a sort of necessary appendage to the
latter. For murder the punishment is death, for treason death,
for defrauding the orphan and the widow, for sacrilege, and for
attempting to quit the country (which is looked on as a sacrilege)
death. In each case the method of execution is the same, and
a rather awful one. The culprit is thrown alive into the fiery
furnace beneath one of the altars to the Sun. For all other
offences, including the offence of idleness, the punishment is
forced labour upon the vast national buildings which are always
going on in some part of the country, with or without periodical
floggings, according to the crime.
The social system of the Zu-Vendi allows considerable liberty
to the individual, provided he does not offend against the laws
and customs of the country. They are polygamous in theory, though
most of them have only one wife on account of the expense. By
law a man is bound to provide a separate establishment for each
wife. The first wife also is the legal wife, and her children
are said to be 'of the house of the Father'. The children of
the other wives are of the houses of their respective mothers.
This does not, however, imply any slur upon either mother or
children. Again, a first wife can, on entering into the married
state, make a bargain that her husband shall marry no other wife.
This, however, is very rarely done, as the women are the great
upholders of polygamy, which not only provides for their surplus
numbers but gives greater importance to the first wife, who is
thus practically the head of several households. Marriage is
looked upon as primarily a civil contract, and, subject to certain
conditions and to a proper provision for children, is dissoluble
at the will of both contracting parties, the divorce, or 'unloosing',
being formally and ceremoniously accomplished by going through
certain portions of the marriage ceremony backwards.
The Zu-Vendi are on the whole a very kindly, pleasant, and light-hearted
people. They are not great traders and care little about money,
only working to earn enough to support themselves in that class
of life in which they were born. They are exceedingly conservative,
and look with disfavour upon changes. Their legal tender is
silver, cut into little squares of different weights; gold is
the baser coin, and is about of the same value as our silver.
It is, however, much prized for its beauty, and largely used
for ornaments and decorative purposes. Most of the trade, however,
is carried on by means of sale and barter, payment being made
in kind. Agriculture is the great business of the country, and
is really well understood and carried out, most of the available
acreage being under cultivation. Great attention is also given
to the breeding of cattle and horses, the latter being unsurpassed
by any I have ever seen either in Europe or Africa.
The land belongs theoretically to the Crown, and under the Crown
to the great lords, who again divide it among smaller lords,
and so on down to the little peasant farmer who works his forty
'reestu' (acres) on a system of half-profits with his immediate
lord. In fact the whole system is, as I have said, distinctly
feudal, and it interested us much to meet with such an old friend
far in the unknown heart of Africa.
The taxes are very heavy. The State takes a third of a man's
total earnings, and the priesthood about five per cent on the