Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER I THE HISTORY OP THE NGONI IN order to understand the present character of the Ngoni it ia necessary to go back to the dawn of the present century and to South Africa, the cradle of these people. The mighty movements of barbarous fanatics in recent times, such as those in the Soudan and elsewhere, sink into insignificance when compared with those that give rise to the presence of the Ngoni in British Central Africa and in German East Africa, not to speak of the Matabele who gave so much trouble to the British, or the other branches of the same race which had to be proceeded against by Portuguese arms. In a district somewhere on, or near, the Tugela river, which now forms the northern boundary of the colony of Natal, there was born, as the century dawned, a child with a reputed miraculous origin but fathered by Senzangakona, chief of the then insignificant Zulu tribe. His mother, fearing for his life, fled with him to the courtof a neighbouring and more powerful chief, named Dingiswayo, ruling the Amatetwa. Here he was received and cared for until he attained to manhood. Umnandi (i.e. the pleasant one) the mother of Chaka, as the child was named, remained with him. Dingiswayo was at that time the most powerful chief in the district stretching from Natal to Delagoa Bay. He had, in the early part of his life, been compelled to flee into what is now part of Cape Colony, and while exiled is supposed to have come into some knowledge of carrying on war by organised regiments and companies. Thus through Europeans came the impulse which, as we shall see, was destined to have such awful results in the life and history of individuals and tribes over nearly half the length of Africa. On gaining the chieftainship of his tribe Dingiswayo organised his army in regiments, and ...