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.[13]

[13] 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

Phœnicians. The cradle of the Phœnician race is supposed to 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, 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 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

Phœnician 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.[14] 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.

[14] There are twenty-two letters in the Phœnician alphabet (_see_

Appendix, Maspero’s _Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient_, 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. 139.—Editor.