Nada the Lily

by H. Rider Haggard
DEDICATION

Sompseu:
For I will call you by the name that for fifty years has been honoured

by every tribe between Zambesi and Cape Agulbas,--I greet you!
Sompseu, my father, I have written a book that tells of men and

matters of which you know the most of any who still look upon the
light; therefore, I set your name within that book and, such as it is,

I offer it to you.
If you knew not Chaka, you and he have seen the same suns shine, you

knew his brother Panda and his captains, and perhaps even that very
Mopo who tells this tale, his servant, who slew him with the Princes.

You have seen the circle of the witch-doctors and the unconquerable
Zulu impis rushing to war; you have crowned their kings and shared

their counsels, and with your son's blood you have expiated a
statesman's error and a general's fault.

Sompseu, a song has been sung in my ears of how first you mastered
this people of the Zulu. Is it not true, my father, that for long

hours you sat silent and alone, while three thousand warriors shouted
for your life? And when they grew weary, did you not stand and say,

pointing towards the ocean: "Kill me if you wish, men of Cetywayo, but
I tell you that for every drop of my blood a hundred avengers shall

rise from yonder sea!"
Then, so it was told me, the regiments turned staring towards the

Black Water, as though the day of Ulundi had already come and they saw
the white slayers creeping across the plains.

Thus, Sompseu, your name became great among the people of the Zulu, as
already it was great among many another tribe, and their nobles did

you homage, and they gave you the Bayete, the royal salute, declaring
by the mouth of their Council that in you dwelt the spirit of Chaka.

Many years have gone by since then, and now you are old, my father. It
is many years even since I was a boy, and followed you when you went

up among the Boers and took their country for the Queen.
Why did you do this, my father? I will answer, who know the truth. You

did it because, had it not been done, the Zulus would have stamped out
the Boers. Were not Cetywayo's impis gathered against the land, and

was it not because it became the Queen's land that at your word he
sent them murmuring to their kraals?[1] To save bloodshed you annexed

the country beyond the Vaal. Perhaps it had been better to leave it,
since "Death chooses for himself," and after all there was killing--of

our own people, and with the killing, shame. But in those days we did
not guess what we should live to see, and of Majuba we thought only as

a little hill!
Enemies have borne false witness against you on this matter, Sompseu,

you who never erred except through over kindness. Yet what does that
avail? When you have "gone beyond" it will be forgotten, since the

sting of ingratitude passes and lies must wither like the winter
veldt. Only your name will not be forgotten; as it was heard in life

so it shall be heard in story, and I pray that, however humbly, mine
may pass down with it. Chance has taken me by another path, and I must

leave the ways of action that I love and bury myself in books, but the
old days and friends are in my mind, nor while I have memory shall I

forget them and you.
Therefore, though it be for the last time, from far across the seas I

speak to you, and lifting my hand I give your "Sibonga"[2] and that
royal salute, to which, now that its kings are gone and the "People of

Heaven" are no more a nation, with Her Majesty you are alone
entitled:--

Bayete! Baba, Nkosi ya makosi!
Ngonyama! Indhlovu ai pendulwa!

Wen' o wa vela wasi pata!
Wen' o wa hlul' izizwe zonke za patwa nguive!

Wa geina nge la Mabun' o wa ba hlul' u yedwa!
Umsizi we zintandane e ziblupekayo!

Si ya kuleka Baba!
Bayete, T' Sompseu![3]

and farewell!
H. RIDER HAGGARD.

To Sir Theophilus Shepstone, K.C.M.G., Natal.
13 September, 1891.

[1] "I thank my father Sompseu for his message. I am glad that he has
sent it, because the Dutch have tired me out, and I intended to

fight them once and once only, and to drive them over the Vaal.
Kabana, you see my impis are gathered. It was to fight the Dutch

I called them together; now I send them back to their homes."
--Message from Cetywayo to Sir. T. Shepstone, April, 1877.

[2] Titles of praise.
[3] Bayete, Father, Chief of Chiefs!

Lion! Elephant that is not turned!
You who nursed us from of old!

You who overshadowed all peoples and took charge of them,
And ended by mastering the Boers with your single strength!

Help of the fatherless when in trouble!
Salutation to you, Father!

Bayete, O Sompseu!
PREFACE

The writer of this romance has been encouraged to his task by a
purpose somewhat beyond that of setting out a wild tale of savage

life. When he was yet a lad,--now some seventeen years ago,--fortune
took him to South Africa. There he was thrown in with men who, for

thirty or forty years, had been intimately acquainted with the Zulu
people, with their history, their heroes, and their customs. From

these he heard many tales and traditions, some of which, perhaps, are
rarely told nowadays, and in time to come may cease to be told

altogether. Then the Zulus were still a nation; now that nation has
been destroyed, and the chief aim of its white rulers is to root out

the warlike spirit for which it was remarkable, and to replace it by a
spirit of peaceful progress. The Zulu military organisation, perhaps

the most wonderful that the world has seen, is already a thing of the
past; it perished at Ulundi. It was Chaka who invented that

organisation, building it up from the smallest beginnings. When he
appeared at the commencement of this century, it was as the ruler of a

single small tribe; when he fell, in the year 1828, beneath the
assegais of his brothers, Umhlangana and Dingaan, and of his servant,

Mopo or Umbopo, as he is called also, all south-eastern Africa was at
his feet, and in his march to power he had slaughtered more than a

million human beings. An attempt has been made in these pages to set
out the true character of this colossalgenius and most evil man,--a

Napoleon and a Tiberiius in one,--and also that of his brother and
successor, Dingaan, so no more need be said of them here. The author's

aim, moreover, has been to convey, in a narrative form, some idea of
the remarkable spirit which animated these kings and their subjects,

and to make accessible, in a popular shape, incidents of history which
are now, for the most part, only to be found in a few scarce works of

reference, rarely consulted, except by students. It will be obvious
that such a task has presented difficulties, since he who undertakes

it must for a time forget his civilisation, and think with the mind
and speak with the voice of a Zulu of the old regime. All the horrors

perpetrated by the Zulu tyrants cannot be published in this polite age
of melanite and torpedoes; their details have, therefore, been

suppressed. Still much remains, and those who think it wrong that
massacre and fighting should be written of,--except by special

correspondents,--or that the sufferings of mankind beneath one of the
world's most cruel tyrannies should form the groundwork of romance,

may be invited to leave this book unread. Most, indeed nearly all, of
the historicalincidents here recorded are substantially true. Thus,

it is said that Chaka did actually kill his mother, Unandi, for the
reason given, and destroy an entire tribe in the Tatiyana cleft, and

that he prophesied of the coming of the white man after receiving his