Zululand

The country lying northeast of the colony of Natal, between its east boundary, the Umtugela and Umzimyati Rivers, lat. 29° 10′ E., and Delagoa Bay, lat. 26° S., long. 32° 40′ E., is generally known under the name of Zululand, or the Zulu country, inhabited by independent tribes of Zulu Kaffirs. The Zulu is by nature social, light of heart, and cheerful; his pa ions are, however, strong, and called out when in a state of war. He is hospitable and honest, yet greedy and stingy; and whatever the better nature of his impulses may be, yet when his great chief commands war, he is converted into a demon. It is from the Zulu country, however, that those terrible tyrants who so long devastated Southeastern Africa, the chiefs Chaka, Dingaan, Moselikatze, etc., i ued. The training of their subjects to a peculiar mode of warfare spread desolation and havoc for many years among the Betjuana and other tribes of the interior. These chiefs with their you sands of followers, fighting, like Homer’s heroes, hand to hand, armed with stabbing a agais and shields of ox-hide, the colors of which distinguished the different regiments they were formed into, melted away with broken power into comparative insignificance before the terrible rifles of a few hundred emigrant Dutch Boers, who, in their turn, gave way to the energetic action of the British authorities. The Zulus often have serious intestine wars among themselves. The principal Zulu tribes are the Amazulu, the Amahute, Amazwazi, and Am at abele. The last, under the chief Moselikatze, have emigrated far to the north, where, among the mountains which separate the valley of the Limpopo from the basin of the Zambesi, they still i ue forth, and carry their depredations as far north as the Lake Nya a, where they were found by Dr. Living stone. A war broke out in the latter part of 1878, or beginning of 1879, between the British and the Zulus, and on January 22, 1879, the British were defeated with terrible slaughter about 10 miles in front of Rorke’s drift; their lo in killed being put down at 30 officers, about 500 enlisted men of the Imperial troops, and 700 enlisted men of the Colonial troops. It seems that the troops were enticed away from their camp, as the action took place about one mile and a quarter from it. The camp containing surplus ammunition, etc., of the British force was taken by the Zulus, but was occupied after dark the same night by British troops. About the same time Rorke’s drift was attacked by some 3000 or 4000 Zulus; its defense by some 80 men of the 24th Regiment was most gallant, 370 bodies lay close around the post; the lo of the Zulus was estimated at 1000 here alone. At the camp where the disaster occurred, the lo of the Zulus was computed at over 2000. The Zulus are even more formidable than the military authorities expected; they are well drilled, great numbers are armed with breech-loaders, and they fight courageously. It is now known but too well how large a force they can ma at one point. Lord Chelmsford, the commander of the English forces in Zululand, after suffering some additional reverses, was superseded in June, 1879, by Sir Garnet Wolesley. Eugene Louis Jean Napoleon, prince imperial of France, participated as a volunteer with the British forces against the Zulus, and was killed (about the end of May or the beginning of June) while on a reconnoi ance under the command of Col. Wood; he was suddenly beset by Zulus and a agaied, receiving no le than seventeen wounds. Prince Napoleon was born in Paris on March 16, 1856. He received his “Baptism of Fire” at the battle of Saarbruck, August 2, 1870, during the Franco-German war, in company with his father, the emperor. After the fall of the empire and the death of his father he resided in England, and graduated with high honors at the Military Academy at Woolwich. The war was terminated in the latter part of 1879, by the total defeat of the Zulus and the capture of the king Cetawayo.