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_ 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.
*{There is another theory which might account for the origin of
the Zu-Vendi which does not seem to have struck my friend Mr
Quatermain and his companions, and that is, that they are
descendants of the Phoenicians. The cradle of the Phoenician
race is supposed to have been have been on the western shore of
the Persian Gulf. Thence, as there is good evidence to show,
they emigrated in two streams, one of which took possession of
the shores of Palestine, while the other is supposed by savants
to have immigrated down the coast of Eastern Africa where, near
Mozambique, signs and remains of their occupation are not
wanting. Indeed, it would have been very extraordinary if they
did not, when leaving the Persian Gulf, make straight for the
East Coast, seeing that the north-east monsoon blows for six
months in the year dead in that direction, while for the other
six months it blows back again. And, by the way of illustrating
the probability, I may add that to this day a very extensive
trade is carried on between the Persian Gulf and Lamu and other
East African ports as far south as Madagascar, which is of course
the ancient Ebony Isle of the 'Arabian Nights'. --EDITOR.}
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, watched 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 by 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
remainder. But on the other hand, if a man through any cause
falls into bona fide misfortune the State supports him in the
position of life to which he belongs. If he is idle, however, he
is sent to work on the Government undertakings, and the State
looks after his wives and children. The State also makes all the
roads and builds all town houses, about which great care is
shown, letting them out to families at a small rent. It also
keeps up a standing army of about twenty thousand men, and
provides watchmen, etc. In return for their five per cent the
priests attend to the service of the temples, carry out all
religious ceremonies, and keep schools, where they teach whatever
they think desirable, which is not very much. Some of the
temples also possess private property, but priests as individuals
cannot hold property.
And now comes a question which I find some difficulty in
answering. Are the Zu-Vendi a civilized or barbarous people?
Sometimes I think the one, sometimes the other. In some branches
of art they have attained the very highest proficiency. Take for
instance their buildings and their statuary. I do not think that
the latter can be equalled either in beauty or imaginative power
anywhere in the world, and as for the former it may have been
rivalled in ancient Egypt, but I am sure that it has never been
since. But, on the other hand, they are totally ignorant of many
other arts. Till Sir Henry, who happened to know something about
it, showed them how to do it by mixing silica and lime, they
could not make a piece of glass, and their crockery is rather
primitive. A water-clock is their nearest approach to a watch;
indeed, ours delighted them exceedingly. They know nothing about
steam, electricity, or gunpowder, and mercifully for themselves
nothing about printing or the penny post. Thus they are spared
many evils, for of a truth our age has learnt the wisdom of the
old-world saying, 'He who increaseth knowledge, increaseth
sorrow.'
As regards their religion, it is a natural one for imaginative
people who know no better, and might therefore be expected to
turn to the sun and worship him as the all-Father, but it cannot
justly be called elevating or spiritual. It is true that they do
sometimes speak of the sun as the 'garment of the Spirit', but it
is a vague term, and what they really adore is the fiery orb
himself. They also call him the 'hope of eternity', but here
again the meaning is vague, and I doubt if the phrase conveys any
very clear impression to their minds. Some of them do indeed
believe in a future life for the good--I know Nyleptha does
firmly--but it is a private faith arising from the promptings of
the spirit, not an essential of their creed. So on the whole I
cannot say that I consider this sun-worship as a religion
indicative of a civilized people, however magnificent and
imposing its ritual, or however moral and high-sounding the
maxims of its priests, many of whom, I am sure, have their own
opinions on the whole subject; though of course they have nothing
but praise for a system which provides them with so many of the
good things of this world.
There are now only two more matters to which I need
allude--namely, the language and the system of calligraphy. As
for the former, it is soft-sounding, and very rich and flexible.
Sir Henry says that it sounds something like modern
Greek, but of course it has no connection with it. It is easy to
acquire, being simple in its construction, and a peculiar quality
about it is its euphony, and the way in which the sound of the
words adapts itself to the meaning to be expressed. Long before
we mastered the language, we could frequently make out what was
meant by the ring of the sentence. It is on this account that
the language lends itself so well to poetical declamation, of
which these remarkable people are very fond. The Zu-Vendi
alphabet seems, Sir henry says, to be derived, like every other
known system of letters, from a Phoenician source, and therefore
more remotely still from the ancient Egyptian hieratic writing.
Whether this is a fact I cannot say, not being learned in such
matters. All I know about it is that their alphabet consists of
twenty-two characters, of which a few, notably B, E, and O, are
not very unlike our own. The whole affair is, however, clumsy
and puzzling. *{There are twenty-two letters in the Phoenician
alphabet (see Appendix, Maspero's Histoire ancienne des peuples
de l'Orient, p. 746, etc.) Unfortunately Mr Quatermain gives us
no specimen of the Zu-Vendi writing, but what he here states
seems to go a long way towards substantiating the theory advanced
in the note on p. 149. --EDITOR.} But as the people of Zu-Vendi
are not given to the writing of novels, or of anything except
business documents and records of the briefest character, it
answers their purpose well enough. _
Read next: CHAPTER XIV - THE FLOWER TEMPLE
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